No Game For Old Men
by RykOakwine
Summary: Not all Ashikabi are young men with blank slate lives like Sahashi Minato. Some have families, careers, friends, relationships. For most, the Sekirei Plan is a disaster that wrecks the lives of Ashikabi and Sekirei alike. This is the story of Sekirei 37, Madoka, and all the others who aren't the special privileged favorites of the Gods and the Canon Author.
1. Bk1 - Ch1 Freedom

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 1.1 – Ch 1 "Freedom"

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Foreward/Author's Note to the Reader:

( _Extended notes are at the bottom of this chapter. The tl;dr version is here at the top.)_

 _1\. Story is Rated M. For actual reasons. Allergic to citrus? Read something else._

 _2\. This story uses the anime as canon and ignores most of the manga._

 _3\. This story calls the city of the story's setting "Shin Tokyo". It's just Tokyo, roll with it._

 _Thanks for giving my story a chance. Several readers have mentioned that by chapter 3 it really takes off, so I ask readers to consider giving it three chapters before making up your mind for certain_.

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 _{Farsense or other Metafaculties}_

 _[Memories]_

 _"Internal dialogue."_

Bonus Material:Pics and a Map of Locations for Book One have been posted on the author's Tumblr. A link to the Book One images is on the author's profile page.

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Friday, December 6th, 2019  
Shin Tokyo, Japan

She watched the gentle fall of snowflakes through the side-window of the automated, sleek, black, MBI mini-bus; her blue eyes were fixed on the beautiful scene passing by. Something about the combination of the most basic of natural events, weather, and the hyper-modern backdrop of Shin Tokyo, was captivating.

It did not snow often in Shin Tokyo in early December. The uncommon event had drawn many of the city's inhabitants out in the late evening chill, bundled up in colorful jackets, wrapped about with woolen scarves, mittens and gloves found at the bottom of dresser drawers and pulled onto chilled hands. The cold air was clean and crisp, making the commercial district of Ginza's many lights shine and sparkle. Nighttime in the towering urban sprawl of Shin Tokyo was always bright and busy; the enormous city never really slept.

Madoka, Sekirei number 37, took it all in as MBI's black mini-bus made its way through the traffic of the commercial district on its way to wherever Madoka was to start the rest of her life.

"Number 37, you are the fifth Sekirei to be released into the city to begin the search for their destined Ashikabi…"

The video briefing droned on via the monitor hanging from the roof of the automated vehicle. Madoka ignored it. Tedious boring lectures and briefings were old news by now to anyone who had been raised in MBI's top-secret Sekirei Labs. For the last several months the only company she'd had were these tedious, boring, lectures and briefings. She wanted to get _away_ from MBI and their mind-numbing obsession with "fight fight fight" and her finding her Ashikabi.

Before she left the top-secret MBI Sekirei Labs, where she and all of her fellow Sekirei had spent their entire lives, the MBI Administrators had arranged for whatever clothing she wanted; no request was too outlandish or difficult. She knew some of her sisters would be putting custom clothiers in the city to some very creative work over the next few months.

For herself she selected normal western style clothing; the sort of clothes any visiting American girl might wear around the city in winter. With her thick blonde hair, blue eyes, and curvaceous body, Madoka wasn't going to pass as Japanese anyway. Therefore, tight stylishly faded designer blue jeans, black-leather high-heeled boots, and a puffy pink coat with a broad hood to cover her head was the outfit she settled on after much internal debate.

At first, when told they would arrange for any clothing she wanted, she had thought of outlandish "awesome" outfits that would show off her eleven-on-a-scale-of-ten body, but she recalled her best friend's advice from a year ago, when they all were first told of the details of MBI's "Sekirei Plan". Number 44, Yosuga, who had been Madoka's best friend all the years they were together in the labs, quietly pointed out to Madoka that the best thing would be to blend in and not stand out if they were all going to be released into the city population. A lot of her sisters would be trying to draw attention so as to more easily find their Ashikabi, their destined mate and life-long-loves.

Yosuga insisted that finding the first male who would have his head turned by bouncing boobs and bare skin would result in a poor selection of a lifelong mate.

Yosu-chan was pretty smart about things like that. And Madoka knew that she herself was not.

"Over the next five months, in the First Phase of the Sekirei Plan, three to six of your competitors will be released into Shin Tokyo each week to seek out the best Ashikabi available…"

So Madoka had resisted the impulse that so many of her fellow Sekirei were giving into. Western style clothes it was, and looking out at the cold snowy night from the back of the mini-bus Madoka blessed her friend and the good advice she had given. Tromping about on a snowy night wearing spandex and latex just did not sound like it would be much fun. Sure, she would look one-hundred percent awesome, but brrrr!

Madoka searched around in the pink and white vinyl "Nyan Nyan" purse in which she had put her MBI Platinum Card and necessities like her hair brush, make up, a few of her favorite earrings from her dorm. They were not allowed to carry much out of the laboratory dorms, but she had been assured the unlimited MBI Platinum Card she was issued would be more than adequate to provide for all the necessities that life in Shin Tokyo demanded.

Madoka was not sure exactly what those "necessities" were, but it could not be too complicated. Find a place to live, get food and, ah… well, whatever else there was she needed. The MBI Administrators of the Sekirei Plan were vague in the briefing. There hadn't been any real training on what they were supposed to do once released, other than find their Ashikabi and then seek out other Sekirei to defeat them in battle.

"Your MBI Platinum Card operates as any commercial bank's debit card would operate. You can use it to purchase products and services at many businesses in the Shin Tokyo prefecture. As much of Japan still operates on a cash economy, each day you can use your card to withdraw…"

Finding a black ink pen in her purse Madoka clicked it then began absently doodling designs on the pale blue denim of her jeans.

Defeat them in battle. "Fight Fight Fight until only one remains!" as Professor Hiroto Minaka put it. Over and over and over again. The last year was full of nothing but "Fight Fight Fight until only one remains" and "Find your Ashikabi" it seemed. She heard it in her sleep even.

Madoka had become sick and tired of it months ago and was not any more enthusiastic about it today. There was no way she could ever defeat even the weakest of her fellow Sekirei in any kind of battle anyway. Unless they dueled via wet t-shirt contest, perhaps.

Make no mistake, _if_ Madoka _could_ beat down her Sekirei sisters and stand atop a pile of their bodies to rule over all she saw, she would.

But that was simply never going to happen.

"The MBI Platinum Card has no limit in order to provide for your own and your Ashikabi's needs. This is so that you can focus on the tournament…"

If there was one lesson that living in the communal dormitories of the Sekirei Labs had taught her, it was that she was at the absolute bottom of the ranking list when it came to Sekirei Badassery. Madoka could not beat the Sekirei who was the _next_ weakest on the list, and that was a Sekirei who could only _cry_ as her "super power". Most of her sister Sekirei could punch holes in concrete walls, leap fifty meters at a jump, and outrun bullet trains. Madoka could not do any of that; all she could do was heal minor injuries, if she put her hands on the person and concentrated really hard. That, and every day was a great hair day for Madoka.

If that is a super power. Maybe it is. At least that would give her two things!

What good is healing cuts and bruises if Toyotama-onee-sama came after her, all towering muscles and blazing speed, plus skill with deadly weapons?

Damn little good, that's what. She could offer to heal the bruises Toyotama's knuckles might get from pounding Madoka's face concave.

This was why Madoka made the effort a few years ago to get Toyotama as her protector. No Sekirei in the Sekirei Labs, but _no one_ , fucked with Toyotama.

A small, self-satisfied, smirk graced Madoka's lips as she continued to doodle with blank ink on her stylishly faded blue denim jeans. " _Well, no one but me."_

Madoka missed her onee-sama, had missed her since they were separated, before Madoka's last round of "adjustments". That was life in the Sekirei Labs, a life of constantly losing anyone you made attachments with. She was fortunate that she'd had her best friend, 44 Yosuga, for so many years of her childhood and that she had her onee-sama, Toyotama, from just after Madoka had emerged from the round of adjustments that had aged Madoka past puberty. Many Sekirei did not have even that much consistent companionship in the Sekirei Labs.

She and her best friend Yosuga had made plans though. Plans to find each other and work together in the Sekirei Plan and to hell with the rules if need be. Madoka knew Yosu-chan had not been released into the city yet, thanks to a friendly, if lecherous, lab tech who was vulnerable to Madoka's smiles and light flirting. Madoka knew she needed to find her own Ashikabi and then get word back into the Sekirei Labs to Yosuga how to contact her as soon as Yosuga was pushed out into the city. The two had made some plans on how to communicate, once one of them was sent into the city, but had no chance to test their ideas. Now Madoka would get the opportunity to do just that.

"Your identification is included with your MBI Platinum Card; it indicates your fake identity as Sanjunana Madoka, a Japanese citizen. Remember, this _illegal_ identity has been created for you by MBI and is not in any way a true legal human record. Any thoughts of betraying the Sekirei Plan and leaving Shin Tokyo will result in your imprisonment and likely execution by the local human authorities as well as…"

Madoka had few illusions about her chances in the Sekirei Plan. She was fortunate enough to be among the first released, before all 100-plus of the other alien Sekirei were free and roaming around Shin Tokyo looking for easy targets. At least she would have some time to find her Ashikabi and enjoy the short months of the rest of her life.

Madoka drew a few "Happy Neko" logos on her jeans legs with her black ink pen, thinking. Maybe her Ashikabi would be the sort of guy who would draw other Sekirei to him as well; a real tough, badass sort, the kind of guy that other Sekirei would want. Not that Madoka was wild about the idea of sharing her mate, except maybe with Yosuga… but she could see living with a situation in which she was the Queen of the House.

In addition, her Ashikabi's' other bonded Sekirei, all strong combat types of course, would keep her and her Ashikabi safe, like good minions should.

Okay, maybe like good concubines.

Concubines _. If_ they were nice to _her_ , the One and Only Wife. Well, maybe One and Only Wife Plus Also Wife Yosuga.

Madoka missed Yosu-chan more than anything.

"It is critical that you immediately seek out your Ashikabi, for until you have found your destined life mate you will be vulnerable to the most ruthless of the enemy Sekirei in the city. You must find your Ashikabi and with a kiss the psychic wings of your race will bond you…"

That seemed like a good plan to her. Now she just had to find the strong, tall, ruthless, dark-haired, handsome, and clever, guy that fit the bill and make him hers. It never crossed Madoka's mind that she might find who she wanted and fail to convince him. There wasn't a male from 12 to 80, and few females, who could resist her when she put her mind to it. No, the real challenge would be in finding him; surviving until she could locate her destined Ashikabi, then get him to build their power base and influence until they were safe and secure to live happily ever after!

Madoka's full, pink, lips smiled at that thought as her carefully manicured and painted fingers toyed with the faded denim of her jeans. Her sky-blue eyes were no longer seeing the early snow outside or the high speed freeway the sleek black mini-bus was now traveling on. Instead, her vision was occupied with a picture of her handsome, strong, dark, and mysterious, Ashikabi faithfully waiting for her, somewhere in this city.

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Somewhere in the north of Shin Tokyo, a scruffy, rakish, handsome (if starting to show his age a bit), Japanese man by the name of Kaoru Seo sneezed, repeatedly. This startled the twin-sister Sekirei he had "winged" just that very hour, binding them to him so that from now on they had to do whatever he said! He was their Ashikabi now, just like he planned when he left MBI's employ as one of their lab monkeys the week before.

This was going to be so awesome! And no _way_ was he going to fall into the same fate as his close friend and college sempai, the late Asama Takehito, who had lost his life due to caring more for MBI and their Sekirei than he cared for himself. Takehito had given Seo some advantages against the Sekirei Plan and Seo was damned if he was not going to use those advantages to the best of his ability. He'd been waiting for years for MBI's Sekirei Plan to begin and now he had his own Sekirei! And they weren't ball busting hanya's like the one Takehito had settled for.

Seo sneezed again.

"Seo-sama, are you sick? Do you have a cold?" the concerned tone of number 11 Hikari's voice brought a happy smile to Seo's lips. As the three walked aimlessly down the sidewalk, her sister, number 12 Hibiki, looked up at him with worry writ on her delicate and classically pretty face. Seo tried to make a point of appreciating Hibiki's pretty face, because he could not see past Hikari's awesome rack. Man, did that girl have some great tits!

"No, no, I'm fine, girls, I'm fine! Hey, let's go get some food, eh? Then a hotel room somewhere and let's get to know each other better, eh?" Seo grinned raffishly at the pretty twins who were comfortably snuggling each side of his torso, his hands moving downwards then squeezing their firm rumps. Twins! This was so great!

Seo didn't notice the glares his roaming hands had evoked on the beautiful faces of his two Sekirei. He _did_ notice that the hair on his arms was standing up, as though an electrical charge was building…

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Yesterday's snow was still hanging around in the high school courtyard. The late Friday afternoon sky was slate and chilly, as seen from Tokyo Metro High School's room 210, where Gregory O'Donnell had his last class of the day: Junior's Honors English. Unlike most of his peers in the teacher's lounge, Gregory loved winter in Shin Tokyo. Though the seasons were mild in the sprawling metropolis he preferred the chill clean air of a blustery December day to the thicker air of spring and summer.

Though there was something to be said for springtime in Japan.

Still, days like this, with snow on the ground, some ice hanging from the bare branches of the trees in the school's large courtyard, and a low sky with gusts of cold wind chasing students from building to building, reminded him a bit of where he grew up. His childhood home had been in New Hampshire on the east coast of the United States; one of those places that none of his Japanese students had heard of and so far a 100% failing score on that bit of trivia. Not that he could blame them. Nothing particularly significant had occurred in New Hampshire in over a hundred years, even considering the impressive array of universities the small state claimed, including Dartmouth College, Gregory's own alma mater.

 _Blustery_. That was the perfect English word for a day like this. He had made sure to work it into his lessons today though he had little real optimism that any of his students would ever actually use the word at any point in their lives. Nevertheless, one could hope, which gave fuel to Gregory's somewhat quixotic mission of keeping slightly archaic English words alive, here in the Shibuya Ward of Shin Tokyo, six-thousand six-hundred fifty-six miles from Dartmouth College.

He would give a lot to overhear, just once, a graduate of Tokyo Metro High School use "blustery" in a sentence.

Gregory smiled to himself as he finished packing away his school issued tablet and other electronics into his old-fashioned attaché case. The attaché went along with the tweed jacket which he made a point of wearing when the weather turned like this, which was rarely enough. His wife thought he was being a bit silly with such an affectation, but damnit, a fellow deserved a few indulgences and play-acting the Ivy League don on a _blustery_ day in Tokyo was his right! So what if he was closer to being a computer-game loving otaku than an Ivy League don. The tweed jacket was cool!

Okay, well, maybe not "cool". But he was going to keep it, damnit!

As he rubbed his hands through his thinning, short cropped, dirty blonde hair, he subconsciously sucked in the small bit of around-the-middle-gut he'd noticed he was carrying around since his 40th birthday a few months past. Then Gregory thrust his thin arms into the tweed jacket's protection, and checked his appearance in the window reflection before exiting the classroom for the day.

Appearances mattered a lot in the teaching business, and even more so in Japan than in the US. Gregory long had the habit of checking to make sure his tie was straight, his collars turned down properly, his shirt well and evenly tucked into his slacks, even after the last class was long gone and the school empty except for those student clubs that met after school.

He hoped to have time to stop and take a few photos on the way home; catch some of this snow in a few picturesque back streets of Shibuya Ward he knew would make for great shots. This part of Tokyo Metropolitan was best known for Shibuya Crossing and for the Meiji Shrine, which was 175 acres of immaculate forest in the west of Shin Tokyo. But it also had some amazing back alleys to explore!

He'd best hurry though, since the sun set early this time of year and traffic was miserable at the best of times. Why he insisted on keeping a private vehicle in a city where the mass transit was an elegant and amazing work of engineering genius he was not sure. Holding onto his American independence perhaps. But he loved his big, soft-top, sunset-orange Jeep Wrangler 4x4. It was _comfortable_. His lean six-foot frame fit in it nicely, unlike many Japanese vehicles, and it was _cool_.

Well, he thought it was cool. So did most of his male students, especially the ones in the Auto Repair Club which he helped sponsor each year. His wife, Karen, mostly thought it was an expensive indulgence.

The American Media and Culture Club tried to get him to take over sponsorship of that student club when he arrived four years ago, since he was assumed to be an expert on American pop culture. But he really didn't have any interest in that sort of club. It was just a bit cliché, too. He already spent all day in class talking about American and Canadian and British culture, since fluency in a language really did not matter much unless you had something to talk to the native speaker about. By their last year in high school the students who elected to take his Senior English class were already essentially fluent; they were polishing their skills by this point and delving into grammatical esoterica, the sort of language mechanics linguists were concerned with.

Therefore, he helped the American Media Club occasionally, since the main teacher sponsor asked so nicely and was, he had to confess, a very attractive woman. However, he primarily co-sponsored the Auto Repair Club, or as it was known when he was in high school, "Auto shop". The 17 and 18 year old males who filled that club, with their Mazda's and Hyundai's and Toyota's, thought his big, canvass topped, 4x4, Jeep Wrangler was awesome.

So there. If he had to spend every Saturday teaching a half day of English as a Second Language to adult students in order to afford the Jeep, the insurance on it, the parking fees, the gas prices, the parking space rental at the school, and the garage rental at the apartment, it was worth it!

As Gregory pulled the Jeep out of the Tokyo Metro High School parking lot and into the evening traffic he figured he had little chance of catching the pictures he wanted to take of those back streets in the snow. But maybe he could catch one of them before it got dark, if he hurried.

He sped up, cutting in and out of traffic a bit more aggressively than was his usual style. Might as well get some practical use from his bulky vehicle, he figured. And he really did want to get some snow pictures of those backstreets before getting home to his wife and teen daughter. Plus he had plans for logging on to World of Guildwars III for a few hours of raiding before bed tonight. Papa needs a new set of Legendary Armor, baby!

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Monday, December 9th, 2019

Madoka had spent her first weekend of freedom from MBI's Sekirei Labs at the Shin Tokyo Grand Hyatt, a luxury hotel near downtown. All shining chrome, steel, glass, and cold lighting, the towering structure of the hotel was matched on all sides by ever more amazing, colorful, and sleek buildings which together made up the most modern urban environment the world had ever seen. Kilometer after kilometer of skyscrapers reached hundreds of meters into the sky with their bases forming an incredibly dense street-level commercial district. Multi-national corporations of every sort vied for the most prestigious office spaces, advertising exposure, and, inevitably, parking allotments.

The traffic was pretty bad if Madoka was any judge. Not that she'd ever visited any other city to compare it to, but the thousands of shiny new cars that moved along the urban street grid didn't ever seem to go anywhere very fast until they finally reached the ring of freeways that led ever further away from the dense downtown area. Then auto-navigation and piloting took over for many of the newest vehicles, and the municipal traffic system coordinated with the underground rail and the street-level bus systems to ease the traffic.

Having checked out of the hotel she had sheltered in for the previous few days, Madoka shouldered the small, stylish, touristy knapsack she'd purchased which now contained some new clothes and living essentials. She intended to take the subway to the Akihabara District just north of downtown, where she wanted to explore and perhaps rent a room to live in for the immediate future. From what she had seen on the hotel City Information Channel, the anime and manga otaku culture of Akihabara looked exciting and fun as well as much less intimidating than the immense chrome and glass canyons of the downtown district.

There would surely be more young people there as well; the hotel she had been staying at was very luxurious but the clientele were all old people. Well, old men, at least. With many young, very pretty, women. _That_ fact led to a lot of assumptions about Madoka's presence at the hotel which she was already quite tired of.

Madoka shuddered. Wrinkly old man skin… over wrinkly old man… parts… GAH! Gross! Gross gross gross!

Walking the few blocks towards the nearest subway station, Madoka enjoyed the chilly evening air even though it was biting her fingers a bit. Maybe she should get a pair of gloves if this cold weather was going to be staying around? Madoka tried to remember how long winter was supposed to last, but a lifetime of experience inside MBI's sprawling laboratories didn't include a lot of intimate knowledge of weather patterns. It was still a few weeks until New Year's Day and it was still winter after New Year's Day so she probably should get some gloves.

The things they didn't think to tell a person about life in the real world!

The side street she was walking along was notably light on foot traffic, which was something of a relief. The incredibly dense crowds on the sidewalks was another aspect of life in the city that Madoka realized she wasn't equipped to handle, after spending her entire life in the dormitories and labs at MBI's main campus.

Madoka quickly made her way along the well-lit evening walkways, not focusing on anything other than her chilled fingers and being amused at the cold air making little puffs of vapor when she exhaled.

A feeling, a sense of something familiar, made her pause for a moment at a narrow space between two towering downtown buildings.

Madoka turned her head to look down the one-lane space, really just a well-lit alley. Her carefully sculpted eyebrows drew down and together in thought. There was something, someone she knew, perhaps, down this way. On impulse, the blonde Sekirei walked into the alleyway, looking up and around, trying to get a feel for what it was or who it was she had sensed in this area.

A loud crash from ahead, echoing in the narrow space between the buildings, startled Madoka so badly she yelped aloud. She stopped and stared at the waste dumpsters some ten meters further along that were at a left turn in the alley. A person had just _plowed_ into the steel bins from past the left turn and scattered the heavy, wheeled containers with a huge racket. The girl who had impacted the big trash bins lay on the concrete paving, trying to stand but having little success.

The girl was familiar to Madoka, even in the odd yellow and black skin tight body suit! She was number 86 Katsuragi, a Sekirei who had spent a short while in the Group 11 dormitory in which Madoka had spent most of her life. Madoka did not know the other Sekirei very well; it had been several years ago and Katsuragi had been a quiet, reserved sort of girl who had only spent a short time in Madoka's group before being moved out to some other Group.

Madoka could only stand there in the middle of the alleyway, shocked, watching, as Katsuragi struggled to get to her feet but could only fall back to the ground, obviously injured from whatever had caused her to hit those waste bins so hard.

The clacking sound of boot heels on concrete now echoed through the urban canyon. Someone was unhurriedly walking towards the fallen 86 Katsuragi from further down the alleyway, past the left turn. Madoka swiftly hid herself in the shadowed lee of a wide garage-doorway. She pressed against the cold metal frame, peeking just one eye around the corner to see what was happening. Who it was that had thrown the other Sekirei with such force?

The echoing footsteps slowed, and Madoka saw the tall woman whose steps had been so ominously approaching the fallen number 86. Madoka's heart clenched for a long moment, both hopeful and fearful. She recognized the muscular limbs, the long, exotic, dark-green hair spilling to the small of the back, the striking ice blue eyes, and not least, the two meter fighting staff/javelin casually held in the woman's right hand.

Madoka had vaguely hoped to find her onee-sama but this was not the scenario the little blonde Sekirei had envisioned.

Number 16 Toyotama stopped next to the still struggling form of 86 Katsuragi, then bent over at the hips and grabbed the fallen girl by the back of her head. Toyotama's gloved fingers twisted cruelly in the hair of the other Sekirei, getting a solid grip, before pulling the fallen girl upright, easily, in an intimidating display of strength. Toyotama held Katsuragi up by her hair, causing the other girl to flail about trying to find footing which was just out of reach.

Madoka remembered the night she had suggested this exact maneuver for her onee-sama, to use on someone physically defeated but who still needed convincing that they were truly at Toyotama's mercy. It was devastatingly effective. Madoka remembered 14 Chiyo finally being convinced by Toyotama to leave Madoka alone after weeks of Chiyo picking on Madoka.

14 Chiyo never wore long hair again that Madoka ever saw. The back of her hair, especially, was in a buzz cut even to the last day Madoka saw her, on the last day Madoka saw Group 11 just a few months ago.

Toyotama reached over her shoulder with her left hand and snapped her javelin into a pair of clips between her shoulders to store it out of the way, then casually backhanded number 86 across the face, blood from the smaller girl's busted lip splattering the dark blue gloves which covered Toyotama's arms to above the elbows.

"Onee-sama…" Madoka winced at how casually Toyotama was beating the smaller 86 Katsuragi. Then, Toyotama was always strong, especially after her puberty "adjustment" period back in the MBI Sekirei Labs. She'd come out of that adjustment with not only dense, thick, muscle but a different attitude and mindset. Not cruel or mean, just… strong minded. In addition, that was when she'd started looking at Madoka with the same eyes the male lab techs had.

[ _Memory_ ] _Madoka's whole body felt a tremor go from her head to her toes, trembling with excitement as she looked up into Toyotama's blue-green eyes. Eyes that looked at Madoka's face with hunger and barely suppressed desire. The Amazonian Sekirei's fingers were in Madoka's long, thick, blonde hair and their naked bodies were pressed tightly against each other from breasts to knees, with Madoka's hands gripping the larger girl's muscular flanks. Madoka wordlessly encouraged her onee-chan by wrapping her own legs around Toyotama's hips and locking her ankles together. Finally, Toyotama gave in and slowly closed the distance between their lips and took what Madoka was so obviously offering…_ ]

Shaking her head to clear _that_ memory, Madoka watched her onee-sama and 86 Katsuragi with dread. Madoka knew there was more going on here than just two Sekirei battling in the Sekirei Plan. She could _feel_ that Katsuragi was unwinged still and that Toyotama was not. So what was this? Something was wrong, very wrong.

Toyotama, satisfied that her opponent was now completely beaten, turned to look down the alley the way she had come, her face blank, unfeeling, and calm.

The headlights of an approaching vehicle cast a growing illumination on the pair of Sekirei. One, standing tall, her large full breasts displayed enticingly in a blue and white open-belly top that showed off her defined abdominal muscles very well. Thigh-high blue leather boots covered her long, powerful, legs.

The other girl was defeated, injured, humiliated, and dangling with her yellow-and-black boot toes barely scraping the pavement of the alleyway. Number 16 held her captive out and away from her body easily, with one arm, almost straight out to the side. It was an intimidating display of raw strength, by design. The other girl was barely able to reach one hand up behind her own head to grip Toyotama's hand where it twisted cruelly in 86's hair.

Madoka's heart thudded so loudly in her chest that she was sure Toyotama would hear it, ten meters away. She watched as the automobile headlights ceased growing larger and brighter; they now clearly illuminated 16 and 86. Madoka heard a pair of car doors open then close. Two people were exiting the car.

Madoka strained to picture what her eyes could not see, around the corner of the alley ahead. She was always one of the best among the Group 11 girls at seeing around corners. Surely, here, when she really needed it… yes! There!

{ _Farsight_ } _A limousine; a dark-suited black-haired man with eye glasses holding open the back passenger-side door; a white-suited, very handsome, light haired young man exiting the limousine then walking towards 16 and the captive 86. Madoka noticed the irrelevant coincidence that his hair was the exact same shade of dark-blonde as Katsuragi's._ }

The white-suited man had an aura about him that, in spite of his bishōnen good looks, made Madoka fearful. Whoever he was, he was a dangerous man, someone Madoka wanted to avoid. She could tell that from the way he held himself, the cruel cast of his face as he came to a stop before Toyotama. As he was now visible to Madoka's physical eyes, she focused all of her senses on the scene; Madoka could see every detail as it unfolded and hear every word perfectly even though she huddled in the garage doorway ten meters away.

The white suited man called over his shoulder to the dark haired limousine driver, "Good job, Kakizaki. Your information on where this one would be released looks to have been accurate."

{Farsight} _Madoka 'saw' the dark suited man, Kakizaki, preen at the praise of his boss, using a finger to press his glasses higher up onto the bridge of his nose.}_

Madoka rolled her eyes in spite of herself. Seriously?

{Farsight} " _Thank you, Higa-sama. One only hopes to serve."}_

It was all Madoka could do to hold in her laughter. This guy could not be for real, could he?

"Let's see if a second of you alien things can be bound to one Ashikabi, eh?" The white suited man, whose name appeared to be Higa, gestured to Toyotama who held the whimpering Katsuragi out towards the man who was obviously Toyotama's Ashikabi.

Madoka's heart sank. She knew Toyotama as well, or better, than she knew any other Sekirei other than her childhood friend Yosuga. Serving such a man could not be her onee-sama's destiny, it just couldn't! Yet Madoka could see the blank-faced number 16 gripping Katsuragi by the hair, turning the other girl's head so that her face was angled upwards and facing Higa. Katsuragi's legs were weakly trying to find purchase on the concrete but failing. Both of Katsuragi's hands now held onto Toyotama's where number 16's fingers were tangled in the smaller girls light brown hair.

Higa stepped up closely to the vainly struggling Katsuragi and reached out with his right hand. He gripped the girl's chin and pulled it downward with a jerk. The aristocratic Ashikabi then put his thumb on the girl's lower front teeth, his fingers beneath her chin, and held her mouth open.

Katsuragi's eyes rolled in her head, terror making her struggle harder against Toyotama's iron grip, to no avail. Sad, scared, sounds came from the terrified number 86's open mouth as Higa turned her face back and forth, looking at her as though he were studying a particularly distasteful insect. With a grimace on his face, Higa leaned towards Katsuragi, causing the captive Sekirei to try to cry out awkwardly, "Agahh!"

Madoka could barely stand to watch; she had never considered in her worst nightmares that an Ashikabi would try to kiss a Sekirei who did not want to bond with him! This was _horrible_ , and there was Toyotama, calmly helping this monster as he leaned in to force his kiss on poor Katsuragi!

Madoka's stomach heaved when she saw Higa _spit_ into Katsuragi's pried-open mouth, instead of kissing her.

She clamped both her hands over her own mouth to keep the outrage she felt from coming forth. He had spit in Katsuragi's mouth! Why would someone do that? What sort of world had MBI released her and the rest of the Sekirei into? He spit in her mouth. _He spit in her mouth!_

"Well, that didn't work. Damn." Higa's aristocratic voice carried his obvious disappointment. "Well, let's try it this way then."

He licked the middle finger of his left hand while still gripping Katsuragi's chin and teeth in his right. Disgust clearly written on his fine features, Higa stuck the finger into her mouth and moved the digit about to mix his saliva with hers.

Light flared and filled the alleyway as an explosion of psychic energy, high up near her shoulder blades, burst from Katsuragi's back. Pale, yellow, diaphanous, wings unfurled, illuminating the appalling tableau in stark light. Madoka, beyond horrified, witnessed the glowing Sekirei symbol appear behind Katsuragi between the glowing wings. It settled onto the thrashing girl's shoulders and embedded itself there for life.

One of Madoka's sisters was now forever bonded to a monster, against her will.

[Memory] _"Hi, I'm Yosuga and this is my best friend, Madoka. What's your name?"_

 _The new transfer to Group 11, skinny, pale, with light blue eyes and dirty blonde hair, answered in a soft voice, "Hi, I'm Katsuragi, number 86."]_

"Okay, Kakizaki, make a note. You don't have to kiss the damn things, but you do have to touch them," Higa called out to his assistant, ignoring the gasping, twitching, number 86 still being held firmly in place by 16 Toyotama.

Turning his head to look at Toyotama, Higa ordered, "Number 16, take that back to the office and clean it up. You are responsible for making sure it knows the rules and what is expected of it. I will have Kakizaki check on it tomorrow and begin its discipline. Do not disappoint me or I will have Kakizaki discipline you, no matter how unsightly he considers your body. Am I clear?"

"Yes, Higa-sama." Toyotama's agreement was immediate, clear, and calm.

Higa nodded and walked back to his limousine while poor Katsuragi writhed in humiliated ecstasy, the psychic fires from the winging still blazing through her nervous system.

{Farsight} _Madoka's 'sight' clearly showed her the back door of the limousine closing behind Higa. He took his seat, waiting for his assistant to drive them out of the alley, already picking up his phone to deal with other business._ }

Madoka watched, with tears streaking her cheeks, one hand covering her own mouth to stifle the sobs she could not completely stop, as the headlights of the limousine backed away. This left a still unmoving and expressionless Toyotama holding a whimpering and weeping Katsuragi. Number 16 shook her head then dropped 86 in a wretched pile at her feet.

"Forever and ever, now, right?" Toyotama's sternly beautiful face grimaced down at Katsuragi.

"Well, you can thank our sister, number 22, for finding out where you were going to be released and when. Aren't you lucky? Come on, 86, get up. You heard our Ashikabi. Follow me. Don't speak unless spoken to, or I will break your fingers one by one until you get the picture. This isn't the fantasy world you thought you were going to, and the faster you figure that out the less pain you'll be in. Got it?"

Katsuragi nodded her head, still crying. This wasn't good enough for Toyotama, who kicked the girl in the side of the head. Her booted foot sent the girl tumbling into the garage dumpsters, again.

"I asked you a question. When our Ashikabi, or his assistant, or I, ask you a question, you answer immediately, aloud, and respectfully. You do _not_ nod your fucking head."

This time Katsuragi spoke up, crying out, "Yes, yes, I have it. Moushiwake arimasen, Toyotama-sama!"

Toyotama reached down and picked up the wretched girl, throwing her over a shoulder.

"Don't apologize, 86; just do as you're told. And I'm just number 16, just like you are just 86. Our Ashikabi doesn't feel actual names are appropriate to… things… like us. Come on, we've got a long way to go to the east side office, so keep quiet and think on the wonderfulness of your new Ashikabi, eh. I can pretty much guarantee he won't ever touch you again, so your memories of tonight will just have to last."

Toyotama glanced down the alleyway towards where Madoka crouched in the lee of the garage-door frame, her dark green eyebrows pulling down and together for a moment. Madoka held her breath, desperate to avoid giving away her position.

After just a moment Toyotama leapt away, carrying the wretched Katsuragi with her.

Madoka waited until she was sure Toyotama and Katsuragi were long gone before stepping out from her hiding place. She staggered towards the turn in the alley where she had witnessed something she had never even thought could happen. A nightmare for any Sekirei.

One that would no doubt happen to _her_ if this Higa, or another Ashikabi like him, ever caught up to her.

[Memory] _The skinny little girl with the dirty blonde hair tried one more time to cheer up Madoka._

" _Hey, Mado-chan, tell me about what your Ashikabi will be like and I'll tell you about mine, okay?"_

 _Katsuragi hoped this worked; the Ashikabi game always pulled Madoka out of her moods._

 _Madoka answered, with a soft smile of appreciation, "Okay."]_

Staring down at the splattered blood of 86 Katsuragi on the concrete pavement, Madoka thought of the short time the plain-faced, quiet, girl spent with Madoka's group in the Sekirei Labs, years ago. Madoka wept for Katsuragi as well as for her onee-sama, Toyotama.

Then she ran off towards the subway station, fear and desperation powering her flight away from this place.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Four days after the terrible events she had witnessed in that downtown alley Madoka had found her way to the west side of the sprawling metropolis, after spending the night at a different hotel each evening as she explored the city. She was very glad that the first hotel she had walked into after MBI released her downtown had been the five–star luxury of the Tokyo Grand Hyatt. The level of service extended to even an ignorant Anglo girl in blue jeans, who held an unlimited Platinum MBI card in her hand, was flawless and Madoka had learned at least the process for renting a room at a hotel without awkwardness, thanks to the unrivaled courtesy of the Hyatt's desk clerk.

Shin Tokyo was still cold, the weather remaining windy and cloudy, though there had been no more snow. The sun had set some hours ago, leaving the black cloud covered sky low above the skyscrapers of Shin Tokyo, colored lights from buildings, advertisements, LED projections and holographs, reflecting back down from the low clouds eerily.

At least, Madoka thought it was eerie. Being outdoors so much was one adjustment she had never considered would be difficult, but it was! All of the Sekirei, as far as she knew, spent most of their time indoors at the MBI Labs and Dormitories here in Shin Tokyo. She certainly had never been out into the city.

Some short exercise periods allowed in the rooftop gym facilities wasn't nearly enough to become used to the idea of weather and sky and crowds and sidewalks and traffic signs or any of the thousand other small yet significant items people likely took for granted as they went about their lives here in this metropolis of 19 million people.

Madoka walked aimlessly along one of the many waterways that crisscrossed the west side of the city. It might be a canal, a small river, or a creek; Madoka really could not say for sure what the precise word for the narrow ribbon of water was, but it had a level, concrete, sidewalk that meandered alongside it. Joggers and walkers used this during the day, but now in the early night it was mostly vacant. The walkway passed under footbridges and street overpasses, all well-lit and clean, which lulled the tiny blonde Sekirei into a careless, introspective, state.

She walked with her small knapsack over her shoulder, her purse and other possessions in the knapsack for easy carrying. She didn't have a destination in mind, though part of her mind realized it was getting colder as the night grew later and a hotel would be needed soon.

What occupied the Sekirei's thoughts were questions about her Ashikabi and speculation about how dangerous it was for her to walk about the city even during the day, due to monsters like that Higa person. What if there were other Ashikabi sending their Sekirei out to find and capture newly released Sekirei and forcing them into a bond which could not be broken this side of the grave? Didn't Higa also indicate that his lackey, Kakizaki, somehow knew that 86 Katsuragi was going to be released on that date and in that location? Something to do with number 22? That statement from Higa had terrifying implications.

Madoka realized that if there was one like Higa, there were surely others. Did others have "inside information" about the release schedule for the Sekirei?

Biting the inside of her cheek, her eyes burned thanks to sudden, unshed tears. Madoka thought about the naïve dreams she and other Sekirei had in the MBI Labs of their "destined" Ashikabi; the man who would be drawn to them by fate. With a kiss, there would be a lifetime, unbreakable, bond of love and romance between them. The visible mark of that bond taking the form of the Sekirei Crest that would then be visible between the shoulders of any 'winged' Sekirei.

Madoka sighed bitterly as she walked along the jogging path. There might be some Sekirei who ended up with a loving Ashikabi and some form of romance and love but she could see now that many of her sisters, and likely herself as well, were destined for a short, brutal, life bound to hateful and cruel men.

Could Toyotama still love her Ashikabi, in spite of the horrid nature of the man? She certainly seemed to respect him and obey him without question.

Madoka knew Toyotama from the years they spent together in the MBI Sekirei Labs. They had spent quite a bit of their time as lovers, with Toyotama-onee-sama taking the role of protector of the smaller, weaker, very pretty, Madoka. This arrangement continued until Madoka was removed from Group 11 for her final individual "adjustments" and processing. She had not been allowed to even say goodbye to her onee-sama or her few other friends, like 44 Yosuga or 18 Ichiya.

She _knew_ Toyotama-onee-sama; the green-haired Sekirei was strong, bold, brave, and she was protective and caring. If Madoka had ended up sharing an Ashikabi with number 16 and that Ashikabi was a good man, Madoka would have been content enough. She had loved her big sister and protector Toyotama even though they both knew that once the Sekirei Plan began and they were released into the city it was probably going to be every Sekirei for herself.

And Madoka knew that Toyotama had loved her as well. The towering, green-haired, Sekirei only admitted it with difficulty, but Madoka had the words from Toyotama's lips more than once. Toyotama had certainly _desired_ Madoka. But seeing how 16 behaved now, with 86 Katsuragi, how brutal she had been, how hateful her words and tone, how harsh… it _had_ to be because of her Ashikabi, that evil man, Higa.

And if being bonded to such a foul and heartless man could change a strong willed and brave Sekirei like 16 Toyotama, what hope did weak and scared 37 Madoka have?

This wasn't how it was supposed to be! Not once, ever, in all the time she was in the MBI Labs, had such evil possibilities been talked about; not among the scientists, the administrators, or the other Sekirei. No one had even imagined that this sort of thing could happen!

Madoka continued walking though the cold wind was starting to chill her legs through the blue denim. Was it safe walking around at night? During the day? If she did not move around the town, how would she meet her Ashikabi? But if she walked about, wasn't she in danger of being forcibly winged?

Distracted by her dark thoughts, Madoka didn't notice the gang of street toughs who'd surrounded her as she walked under one of the many street-overpasses along the waterway. She was oblivious until one grabbed her knapsack and yanked it off her shoulder, making her stumble into another of the young thugs. He grabbed her arms and held her in a strong grip, leering at her as she began to struggle and cry out.

"Well, look at this, we were wondering about dinner and the gods just delivered that and desert too, eh?"

Madoka could smell alcohol on the young man's breath as he talked. She shook her arms to try to get free but he had a good grip on her. Peering around she saw there were six others who were now looking her over. One grabbed the zipper of her bulky jacket and pulled it down, then held it open, whistling in admiration.

"Holy shit, will you look at that! Woooah, this is our lucky day, fellas, and yours too, blondie! If you don't fight too much or scream, we'll even let you live, promise!"

The tall, dark-eyed street tough could not take his gaze off Madoka's breasts, which were snuggly covered by a silk, Chinese cheongsam blouse that hugged every curve of her upper body. The freezing air striking her torso, as the jacket was pulled open, made her nipples harden, visibly, through the fabric of the shirt, keeping the man's attention completely riveted.

The slightly drunk punk who was holding her arms behind her back let go to reach around and paw at her breasts through the thin material of the shirt, squeezing her brutally.

" _Oh god, what if, what if one of these brutes is an Ashikabi? I could end up bound to one of them!"_

Suddenly the possibility of gang rape was not the biggest fear in her heart.

As the other street toughs crowded around to get a look at their prize, Madoka panicked. She screamed, "No!" then stomped her boot heel down as hard as she could onto the foot of the one grabbing and squeezing her so cruelly.

With a cry of pain, his grip on her relaxed just enough for her to twist free and run, as fast as she could; away from the hidden space under the bridge where the street gang had lurked, where they took shelter from the wind and from the cameras of the local police.

Madoka ran; it was difficult in her boots, but she did not stop for fear of those horrible men catching up to her and dragging her back to whatever horrid fate they had planned for her.

What felt like hours later, Madoka collapsed onto a mass transit bus stop bench, gasping for breath and hoping she was safe. Surely they weren't following her still! She felt as though she had run for kilometers. She was cold, shivering from the wind and the increasing dampness in the air. She was also shaking from reaction to the danger she had been in, the fear of what might have happened to her if she'd not been lucky enough to escape.

Madoka resolved to get a hotel room and lay low for a few days, recuperate from this latest ordeal. Then she realized that her purse, with her identification and her unlimited MBI credit card…

… had been in her knapsack, with everything else she owned. Which was now in the hands of some street thug, somewhere she would never find even if she had the courage to try.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory took his cup of tea and looked out from the patio window of his family's apartment in the Shibuya Ward in the west of Tokyo, overlooking the night-lit street that passed in front of the apartments. A concrete retaining wall across the way formed the far border of the sidewalk along the street, leading to a mass transit rail crossing not far away. It was a view he often stopped to appreciate, a distinctly Japanese vista which many walked past daily without seeing.

He had spent the evening helping his wife Karen and their teenaged daughter Michelle hang the last of their Christmas decorations. The reflections of the bright twinkling colored lights shone in the glass of the patio door, overlaying the blue-light of the street scene outside his window. It had been a pleasant evening, a nice Friday night with the family, without any bickering or trouble among them. Always a blessing when that could happen.

Michelle, or Mishi as she was more commonly called now, was 16 years old and a popular high school student with excellent verbal and written Japanese skills. She had already bid goodnight to her boyfriend, Yashiro Tomo, and turned in for the night. Gregory was proud of how well the girl had adjusted to life in Tokyo. Moving the girl here when she was 11 years old and barely had any Japanese language had been a gamble, but it had paid off. Michelle, or Mishi-chan as she was known to her friends, had blossomed in Tokyo. Gregory wondered if the girl would move back to the States after high school or not. At this point he figured it was probably up to Tomo-san as much as anything else.

Boyfriends and the pretty teenage daughter were the main reason Gregory's hair was now thinning and receding. It had been a lot easier navigating the teen years of his and Karen's now-adult son, Mark.

"Looks like it's going to rain," Gregory said aloud, in English, to no one specifically. The rule of the house was English inside, Japanese whenever they were away from home. It helped Karen, particularly, feel less isolated and homesick, especially when they had first moved here to Japan.

Karen called from the kitchen where she was putting away the dinner dishes, "What's that? Rain? Great, just great. Hopefully it's stopped by tomorrow when you have to go to Saturday classes. I hate it when you have to drive in this city in the rain, people here can't drive at all, I swear."

Gregory just smiled slightly in response. Karen was not wild about living in Japan, but he had learned if he just let her rant about it now and then, she was able to deal with living here well enough. Her job at the central office for the Red Cross here in Shin Tokyo kept her busy enough that most of her complaints about the city simply involved traffic these days.

It was thanks to Karen's Red Cross job that they both first visited Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. They had been relief workers helping clean up the wreckage of that horrible disaster. When they returned to the States, Gregory threw himself into his Japanese language studies. A few years later and they were back in Japan, this time in Tokyo; he as an English teacher in the public schools, Karen as an administrator with the Red Cross office. Nine years after the Tōhoku earthquake, they were both doing very well in their chosen professions.

It had been a good move, Gregory thought. He and Karen may have grown apart, but after twenty years of marriage that was bound to happen. They got along mostly, and that counted for a lot.

A rumble of thunder in the distance made itself heard. Yes, it was definitely going to rain, and it was cold as hell too. Hopefully it didn't freeze out there tonight, or driving to Saturday school was really going to suck, no doubt about it. People here really _didn't_ know how to drive on slick roads, especially in the opinion of a New Hampshire native like Gregory O'Donnell.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka pulled the cardboard box over her as best she could and huddled down into the lee of an alley wall to get out of the cold wind. Exhausted, without any way to get food or shelter, she could only look blankly up at the sky when the first cold rain drop splattered onto the cardboard she'd hope would cover her until dawn.

When the first peal of thunder reached her ears, she ducked her head as deeply into the hood of her jacket as she could and began to cry, her tears soon mixing with rain as it pelted her in her cardboard shelter in this nameless alleyway. Madoka used her healing ability occasionally on herself, to warm her core temperature up and stop the shivering, enough to nod off to sleep for a few minutes at a time.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. It just wasn't! Not for Sekirei who were to find love, who lived to love and be loved by their Ashikabi.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

Author's Notes:

First, this story is Rated M (the equivalent of an American Rated R movie, i.e., no one under 17 admitted without a parent, a movie made to be _not_ for teenagers) for _actual reasons_ , not just "to be safe" (whatever _that_ common disclaimer means). There are many adult situations portrayed in this tale, as any serious story of psychic bonded alien sex slaves should at least _try_ to address and acknowledge.  
Sexless eunuchs, such as the canon protagonist Sahashi Minato, are not representative of normal, typical, Japanese teenagers, or, for that matter, representative of normal human males of any age past puberty. Expecting all or even most Ashikabi to behave as sexless eunuchs towards their bonded, willing (very _very_ willing), beautiful alien sex slaves is... let's just say, somewhat unrealistic.  
Obviously the Sekirei are only "sex slaves" to the extent their Ashikabi treat them as such, and there certainly would be those who would treat their permanently bonded unearthly beautiful subservient very poorly as well as those who would treat them very well and lovingly, while _not_ ignoring the Sekirei's desire to carry out their primary mission: interbreeding with Terran humans.  
To be clear, consenting healthy physical relationships are portrayed in this story _and_ unhealthy, unethical, non-consensual, abusive, behavior is _also_ portrayed.  
The author hopes these scenes have been presented in a way that illustrates the importance of sexual behavior and relationships to the people experiencing them, but without crossing the line. Probably a vain hope, but there it is.

Secondly, the author asks the reader to keep in mind that not all ideas and speculations by the _characters_ in the story will be correct or factual. The characters are just as able as anyone to guess wrong and make mistakes. The characters will come up with theories and they will label things incorrectly just as often as anyone else might. Do please try to keep in mind the difference between a _characters_ observations and what is presented as fact by the Voice of the Author.

Thirdly, this story is already mostly outlined in detail (expect about 40 to 45 10,000 word chapters ultimately) and the first several arcs are already written completely at the time that the first chapter will be posted. Each story arc will be posted as a "Book", so "Book One" consisting of the intro arc (the first four chapters) will be posted, then later "Book Two" consisting of chapters five through seven will be posted, and so on, as long as arcs are completed. If the story ever becomes truly abandoned the author will post his outline for all of the remaining chapters for any curious readers.  
Posting only complete arcs should help avoid any abandoned cliffhanger plots, even if the tale is eventually abandoned as incomplete.  
If the story is never completely finished, the reader is welcome to assume that after the last-posted "Book" the characters go on to meet the same fate as they did in canon, or in the fanfic story "The Game Changer" (see below under "Lastly" for notes on "The Game Changer"), whichever the reader prefers.  
Obviously the author hopes that never happens, but given that it has taken a year and a half to write even this much there is always that possibility. Posting only completed story arcs ("Books") should help. The author loathes incomplete and abandoned stories, especially those in the genre/type of this one (romance/relationship/angst sorts of stories) and wants to assure prospective readers that he will at least only post completed plot arcs.

Fourthly, this story treats the two seasons of the _Sekirei anime_ as the canon source, _not_ the manga (167 chapters published at the time of this story's posting). There will be many differences between this story and the manga, **please do not bother pointing them out**. If the reader believes they have noticed contradictory information to canon the author asks that the reader consider whether or not the canon material in question is the anime or the manga before commenting.  
In the _extremely_ unlikely event that a third season of the Sekirei anime is produced, then one expects there will be great differences between this story and whatever story that hypothetical third season tells. To this the author says, "So?"  
On the subject of "canon": every effort has been made to not actually _contradict_ matters presented as _actual_ _facts_ in the canon material, while also not hesitating to _add_ new things to the story if that addition makes the tale better in the opinion of the author. Much of the _new_ information provided in this story (especially the sections that delve into the lives of the Sekirei in the MBI Labs before the start of the Sekirei Plan) is entirely made up by the author of this story and _does not claim to be canonical_. The author _does,_ however _,_ claim just as much right to "make up new stuff" as anyone else, up to and including the original canon author, Ashika Sakura (aka Sakurako Gokurakuin).

Fifth, anyone curious about the dates and the calendar of this story, the author assures you they have been carefully considered and compared to canon to fit. You can review the Sekirei Anime Season One and Two calendar of events at my Tumblr page (a link to that is easily found on the Author's profile). We _meticulously_ went over every episode of both seasons and assembled as close a timeline of the canon story as possible. Be aware that exploring other sections of the author's Tumblr page will expose the curious to NSFW pics (most of it inspired by the characters in this story), so do please only visit _rest_ of the site if you are a legal adult and have a desire to view naked beautiful blonde girls with large breasts.

Sixth, given that a great deal of time passed between writing the first chapter and the most current chapters the author acknowledges there are shifts and changes in style over the course of this story. I can only ask that anyone reading this story understands that over time a writer's skills change and real-life events can have an effect on what they write and how they write it as well and do please forgive any inconsistencies in style noticed. Any actual continuity errors (and the author freely admits there could be some in spite of all efforts) are appreciated when pointed out so that they can be corrected.

Seventh (gah!), the name of the city the story is set in. We're calling it Shin Tokyo in this tale instead of the various translations of the name used in Sekirei, most commonly "Shinto Teito". It's _Tokyo, Japan_. If the reader will just roll with that they will be happier.

Lastly (at last!), in the later arcs of this story (sometime after this story's chapter 25 or so) the overall global Sekirei plot will mirror the global events of the story "The Game Changer" by Fenschway, on this site (note 3/29/16: TGC is currently taken down by the author for a re-write. I have no idea how long it will be unavailable. PM Fenschway with questions about The Game Changer).  
The author is well aware that "The Game Changer" is a somewhat polarizing story which has its own fans and its own detractors and he wishes to make sure potential readers of "No Game For Old Men" understand that the two stories are very different in style _and_ are about completely separate characters with only some limited crossover. Fans of TGC should not assume they will like NGFOM nor should detractors of TGC assume they will not like NGFOM.  
They really are very different stories.  
The author _would_ like to thank Fenschway for generously giving the OK to use his global plot and the events of "The Game Changer" in this story and _thank him_ for _many_ hours of discussion concerning Sekirei, TGC and NGFOM, which have inevitably made this story _much_ better than it otherwise would have been. Fenschway has been the primary Beta Reader for this tale since before the first chapter was even outlined and he has this writer's profound gratitude for his help over the years!  
Not until late in this story will the global events of "The Game Changer" be impacting the world of "No Game For Old Men" and that primarily because the actual canonical "end game" story in the Sekirei manga is not complete at this time and is also, pardon to any actual fans of the manga, not very well written in this writers opinion. The author of this story prefers Fenschway's story of the Sekirei and their purpose on Earth so will use that tale as the basis for where this story eventually goes.  
That said, this is a small-scale story about a handful of people and how their lives were irrevocably changed by Hiroto Minaka's insane Sekirei Plan. It is not focused on the global plot so much as on the effects of events on the individuals "on the ground".

* * *

"No Game For Old Men" has been editor-read by Fenschway. Errors in grammar and spelling are entirely the fault of the author and should not reflect on the heroic efforts the editor-reader has made in helping with the technical writing.  
Sekirei beta readers who have bravely given parts of the story preview reads and feedback to the author include Godric Khargh, angelofpeaceandwar045, FintonStack, Yuna the Ninja, ReaperxStalker, Littlest1, and I'm sure I am forgetting a few others who've at least read the Intro Arc and provided valuable feedback. Thank you each for your help.

I would like to dedicate this story to two fanfiction authors who influenced me greatly:

First, LordoftheLandofFire for being the first fanfic writer I ever read who convinced me that fanfic could be fun and entertaining instead of just weird and geeky. His stories were the inspiration that convinced me to try my own hand at writing fanfic (the observant might see a shout out or two in this tale to LotLoF's various Sekirei stories). Thank you, LotLoF and I hope that if you read this story you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed your tales.

And second, MistressWinowyll, who's written and collaborated on many stories on this site (mostly Naruto and Rosario+Vampire tales) and whose writing taught me that a fanfic author has just as much right to tell the story they want to tell as anyone else does, including the original author. Tell the story you wish to tell, tell it fearlessly, and let it be judged on its own. Thank you for that valuable lesson, MistressWinowyll. I am forever in your debt for it!

Started Aug 22 2013  
Completed Sep 12 2013  
"Final" Edits Sep 29 2014  
Originally Posted May 7 2015


	2. Bk1 - Ch2 Meeting

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 1.2 – Ch 2 Meeting

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Saturday, December 14th, 2019

Gregory stepped out of his favorite donut shop with a warm box of glazed delicious awesome in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other. Tea was the traditional drink in Japan but there were many coffee shops. There were hundreds of Starbucks in Shin Tokyo alone, a fact that always surprised Gregory's friends from the States.

" _Tea is fine, but for donuts on a cold morning, it's got to be coffee!"_

Even if it meant possibly running late for his Saturday morning "English as a Second Language" class.

"Well, they won't start without me. I'm the teacher," Gregory muttered to himself as he maneuvered the box of donuts into the passenger seat of his Jeep. Walking around to the driver's side he opened the door and glanced across the canvas roof of his tall four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Gregory paused with one foot up on the flat black step-rail that ran along the bottom of his Jeep's doorway; his eyes caught on the scene in an alley across the street.

A young woman with shoulder-length blonde hair huddled under wet cardboard and newspapers. She was sitting on the cold ground and leaning against the brick wall of a closed retail store, her breath making small puffs of vapor as she slept. A large sheet of wet cardboard lay nearby that had apparently just been blown away from her by the same stiff breeze that was chilling Gregory's hands.

Homeless people were not common in Shin Tokyo, and homeless, blonde, Anglo girls were a _complete_ anomaly as far as Gregory was concerned. Without looking away from the sleeping girl, Gregory grabbed his Nikon v10 from where he kept it hanging by its strap inside the Jeep. Taking the lens cap off and focusing the camera with the unthinking automation of long practice, Gregory snapped three shots of the sleeping girl in the alley.

" _How in the hell did she find an alleyway that had cardboard and newspaper debris to cover up with? That alley is one of maybe five in the entire Shin Tokyo metro area with trash in it."_

Just one of the many ways Shin Tokyo was different from big cities in the States.

Lowering the camera and absently putting the lens cap back on, Gregory looked at his cell phone watch, then at the donuts, then at the girl. He muttered, "It's freezing, dammit, and I'm going to be late to class. Gah, damnit!"

Gregory put the camera back into its sling inside the Jeep then jogged across the street with the box of warm donuts in hand.

"Hey, Miss? Miss? Hi, no, hey, don't worry. I'm not here to cause you any trouble. It just looked like you'd maybe had a rough night and could use a donut."

Gregory easily spoke flawless Japanese, and he offered the box of rapidly cooling donuts as he knelt down to make himself a less threatening sight to the just-now-waking and obviously confused girl.

She looked to be about 18 and incredibly pretty though her lips were a bit blue and her teeth were chattering from sleeping outside in this bitter cold. Gregory kept sitting on his heels, holding out the donut box, watching as the girl pushed the wet cardboard covering away from her.

Gregory noticed her sky-blue eyes darted about in a bit of a panic.

" _Probably trying to figure out where she is and how she got here. She doesn't look hung-over though, eyes are puffy but not bloodshot. Did she understand the question? Maybe she doesn't speak Japanese. Damn it's cold! Did she sleep here all night? No way is she homeless, not with those perfect fingernails, the well-kept hair, and those brand-new, if stylishly worn, clothes."_

Being a high school teacher of seventeen and eighteen year-old students for many years, as well as having a teenaged daughter of his own, had trained Gregory's eye to more details of feminine accoutrement than was common for most men his age.

The girl's eyes settled on Gregory as she slowly stood, her muscles must have been a bit cramped and stiff from the cold. Gregory waited until she had finished standing before getting to his feet himself. He backed up a little as he stood, having learned long ago that looming over people tended to put them off, especially here in Japan.

Not that this girl was Japanese. She had natural blonde hair, you could spot bleach jobs no matter how much money was spent on the process. And there had never been a Japanese person born with sky-blue eyes like that.

And damn, she was pretty. Even after a night in the freezing cold and rain as well as sleeping in an alley, she looked like a work of art; something crafted on one of God's more inspired days.

"Donut?" Gregory kept holding out the donut box with what he hoped was a friendly smile on his face.

The girl hesitantly smiled at him, and Gregory was _lost_ for the rest of his life.

Oh and she really _was_ gorgeous. Incredible, beautiful… the most beautiful girl Gregory had ever seen. He stood there holding out the donut box with a befuddled look on his face instead of the intended friendly smile.

She answered in a voice that was a little scratchy from being out in the weather all night, but was nevertheless amazing to Gregory's ears; pure in tone and a clear pitch, mezzo-soprano. There was an alluring timbre to it that Gregory couldn't quite identify. She sounded a bit like a teenaged Sarah McLaughlan. If the very Canadian Sarah McLaughlan ever spoke perfect Tokyo-standard Japanese, that is.

"Thank you, yes, a donut would be very welcome."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka tried to keep from sighing since the old guy with the donuts had not responded. He was just standing there, staring at her.

She was used to men staring at her. They'd been doing so for years in the MBI Sekirei Labs. Since the round of 'adjustments' that matured her body past puberty she'd had to get used to the male scientists and administrators staring, especially at her breasts. They _were_ generously proportioned, even compared to the Sekirei norm, which was much larger than the Japanese population average. Larger than the German population average, for that matter, where fifty-two percent of the women sported D-cup accessories. Compared to Japan, where fifty-one percent of the women needed only A-cup support. So she was used to… standing out.

Madoka paused for a moment to recall why she knew all that, but failed. The trivia of global breast sizes: life in the MBI Sekirei Labs _was_ extremely competitive between the Sekirei and not just in the fighting arts.

At MBI it had been disconcerting to wake up from a round of adjustments, one of many in her and every Sekirei's life in the labs, and suddenly be the target of male leering. The worst of it were the male scientists since they could, and often did, insist that nudity on the part of their subjects was essential for accurate observation, measurements, and tests.

This blatant excuse for ogling naked nubile females who averaged DD-cup boobs was endorsed and encouraged by the President of MBI, the 'Professor', Hiroto Minaka, so there wasn't anything the uncomfortable Sekirei girls could do about it. Even the female administrators and scientists who were employed by MBI just shrugged and ignored the embarrassment of their Sekirei subjects, for the most part.

No, Madoka was used to being stared at, even leered at. What was making her uncomfortable about this American with the donuts was that his gaze hadn't slid south of her face even after she unzipped her jacket for comfort and took one of his donuts. He kept looking at her face instead of her breasts. Was there something wrong with him?

She chewed the warm pastry, very happy to have something to eat, and stepped out from the alley onto the sidewalk, hoping that the morning sunlight would warm her somewhat. So very cold! All night she had shivered and shaken and then the rain had made it even worse.

Losing her MBI card had turned into the worst disaster she could have imagined. Well, other than a disaster like she'd witnessed befall 86 Katsuragi five days ago in that downtown alley. Freezing in the rain was preferable to being forced into a lifetime of psychic enslavement to a monster like that man Higa, or his slimy sidekick Kakizaki for that matter.

Probably. Maybe.

Madoka looked sideways and up through her dark eye-lashes at the tall American who continued to stare at her with his mouth open like a dead fish. Just her luck; another old pervert, at least 40, with a receding hairline, wrinkles around his eyes and lines on either side of his mouth. Blond hair and green eyes, so she had assumed he was American, though his question to her about the donuts was asked in very good Japanese. He was irritatingly tall as well, probably 190 cm, and looked to be skinny under that silly brown wool jacket.

The wind was cold, and the sun wasn't helping much. The donut was gone all too quickly, and Madoka was forced to admit to herself that she would end up seeking out Higa on her own if she had to spend many more nights outside in this weather and without food.

She felt like crying though it seemed cold enough to freeze her tears on her cheeks if she did.

"My name is O'Donnell Gregory. Please call me Gregory, thank you. How are you? Here, please do have another donut. I've more than I need, really."

Suppressing another sigh, Madoka turned to face the now-identified Gregory O'Donnell, and then turned her very best smile on him while tilting her head cutely. Any port in a storm, and this whole Sekirei Plan of MBI's had turned into more than a mere storm; it was a typhoon.

"My name is Madoka." The blonde girl paused for a moment, trying to remember the family name MBI had given her on her fake ID. "Sanjunana Madoka. And, well, I am so-so, I guess. Thank you for the donut, yes please, I will have another."

She took a second donut and, licking the frosting from her finger, proceeded to devour the donut somewhat rudely. She really was extremely hungry.

His eyes watched her tongue as it wrapped around her index finger to remove the gooey glaze left there by the donut. Madoka smirked, which caught his attention since his gaze was riveted on the action of her lips and tongue.

" _At least he has the grace to blush a bit. Maybe this will not be so terrible."_

For the first time since she stood up from the mess of cardboard and newspapers, the man's eyes turned away from Madoka's face, somewhat to her relief. He murmured an apology for his staring as he gestured across the street to a large orange vehicle with a canvas top.

Gregory asked her if she might need a ride somewhere, perhaps home or to a friend's house. "I'd be glad to drop you off somewhere if you need a ride. It's no trouble."

"I did have a place to be," Madoka replied, hanging her head slightly. "A friend who was supposed to meet with me when I arrived in the city, but that has not happened and I do not know why. Then last night some thugs stole my bags and my purse, so I am now without identification or resources." She paused and looked up through sooty black lashes at the now-concerned-looking Gregory O'Donnell before continuing, "I confess I am in something of a bad situation now. I can get new identification and replacements for my cards and clothes but it will take several days I am sure. I do not know what to do until then, I know no one in the city at all other than my friend who has not shown up to meet me."

Madoka congratulated herself on such a clever story. Now if she could just get the old guy to offer her a place to stay for a while until she found her Ashikabi then everything would get a lot better. She looked up at Gregory O'Donnell, willing him to want to help her, to do whatever he could to offer her aid without trying to take advantage of her needy state. That part was essential. No taking advantage!

Gregory blinked then tucked the box of donuts under an arm and gestured again towards the vehicle parked in front of the bakery across the street. He said, "I'll certainly do whatever I can to help, Sanjunana-san. I have a class I need to teach for the next few hours. After that, we'll see what sort of plan we can come up with, okay? If you'll come with me, at least you'll be out of the weather and the cold." He smiled a bit crookedly at her as he started off across the street. "And I promise that I won't take advantage of you, Sanjunana-san. I'm a school teacher, not a pervert. Promise."

Madoka smiled brightly at Gregory to help nail down his decision to help her and followed him quickly. "Thank you very much, Gregory-san," she replied as she climbed into the passenger side of his vehicle, having to use the step rail to reach the interior. "I would be glad to accompany you to your school for the morning, especially if there are more of those delicious donuts available? And please call me Madoka."

Gregory grabbed a donut for himself then handed her the box. "Sure, Madoka-san. Here, have all the donuts you want, please!" He buckled his seat belt and started the Jeep's six-cylinder gasoline engine, letting it warm up a bit before putting it in reverse and easing backwards into the street.

Madoka examined the dashboard of the vehicle with interest; it was cluttered with LED screens showing the speed of the vehicle, how much fuel it had, and all sorts of other, more esoteric, information that she assumed was essential for the driver to know. There was also a 20cm display in the center of the dash which was currently showing a street map. Madoka watched Gregory operate the metal stick that protruded up out of the floor of the vehicle between the seats while pressing and releasing pedals further up on the floor.

"Manual transmission," Gregory explained in an offhand manner after noticing her expression of puzzled interest. "It's a pain in the city, but it's the only way to go off-road. Not that I get to take it off-road much."

Madoka nodded, pretending she understood what he was talking about. It looked a lot more complicated to operate a vehicle than she had thought it would be. Then again, her entire experience with vehicles was limited to the driverless MBI mini-bus that had delivered her from MBI's headquarters just over a week ago and the dozen or so cars that had almost run her over as she tried crossing the streets in this huge city.

She helped herself to another donut and watched out the window as they made speed towards wherever it was that Gregory O'Donnell taught school on a Saturday morning. At least it was warm in the Jeep, and not raining on her. Already a vast improvement over her prospects from just a few hours ago.

The low music playing through the overhead speakers lulled her into a doze as they drove. The warmth and security relaxed her more than she expected while being alone with a strange man. But she was just so tired.

" _Like a picture she was laying there, moonlight dancing off her hair…"_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

The waitress sat the check down on the table next to Gregory then turned to Madoka who was sitting opposite from Gregory in the comfortable diner booth. "Are you sure I can't bring you anything else?"

Gregory watched as Madoka turned her 10,000 watt smile onto the waitress. He was amazed at how the buxom blonde girl had turned the waitress into her willing and eager slave without even trying.

" _Life really is different when you look like an idol. A really good-looking idol. Whose smile turns waitresses into puddles."_

"Thank you. We do not need anything else. The food was wonderful and the service excellent, thank you so much." Madoka's light mezzo-soprano voice seemed to send the same shivers down the servers' spine that it did for Gregory.

Gregory suppressed an amused chuckle and handed the waitress his bank card to pay the bill. He expected that Madoka truly didn't want any more food. If not for the prompt service of the wait-staff her side of the table would be stacked with bowls, plates, and saucers after the incredible lunch they'd just had.

After the Saturday morning English class had been completed he'd offered to take Madoka to lunch at his favorite western-style diner. For filling up with hot food you just couldn't beat burgers and fries, coffee, and maybe a slice of pie for desert. Madoka was agreeable; she claimed to love western food, though the way she spoke of it confirmed to Gregory that she was likely a native of Japan, appearances notwithstanding.

There were certainly Europeans who had immigrated to Japan at various times in the past. Native-born Japanese citizens of Anglo decent were unusual, very unusual, but not unheard of. Gregory was dying to quiz the girl about her parents and find out what her story was. Her name was certainly Japanese, both her given name and her family name.

But she looked so Nordic, other than her diminutive height, that Gregory would have been willing to bet a month's salary that there was a lot more ' _Eriksdotter'_ in her genes than ' _Sanjunana_ '.

What sort of family name was 'Sanjunana' anyhow? Who names their daughter 'Thirty-Seven Madoka'?

With the waitress gone to process the payment for the bill, Madoka's smile faded. A brooding, worried, look took its place; her eyes half-lidded, and her face pensive. She absently sipped at the cup of hot coffee that she had ordered after she had gone through half of the diner's menu. She'd had a cheeseburger, fries, onion rings, a grilled-cheese sandwich on toast, a club sandwich, a dozen battered and fried mozzarella sticks, another cheeseburger, and then slices of two different kinds of pie.

Gregory was still amazed at the feat of feasting he had just witnessed. He was a fairly accomplished trencher himself, able to pack away enough food for his wife to joke about his 'tapeworm and hollow leg'. Back when his wife still made playful jokes about him.

But what he had just seen this tiny blonde girl put away was astounding.

He wisely kept his thoughts on the subject of her voracity to himself. Never mention a woman's apparent age or how much she eats. This rule had stood Gregory in good stead for many years and he did not intend to break it now. Regardless of the temptation to gape at the food that disappeared into the full-lipped mouth gracing the face of the girl across the table from him.

She was worried, he could tell. Probably about where to stay for the next few days while she tried to get her bank card and ID replaced. Gregory set his own coffee cup down on its saucer and spoke up, "I've got an idea for where you could stay until you get your feet under you again or find your friend. You could stay at our place, with my family. It's a two bedroom apartment, but we've got plenty of room."

Madoka turned her blue eyes up to look at Gregory through her sooty lashes. It was almost as adorable as when she cocked her head to the side quizzically. "You said you have a wife and a daughter. You would know best, I am sure, Gregory-san, but what would your wife say if you brought home a female house guest who she does not know?"

"Oh, you can bet that she'd have a thing or two to say about it, especially given your amazing good looks." Gregory grinned crookedly in reply. He paused to pick up his coffee cup, not noticing Madoka's surprised blink at the casual compliment. He took a sip before continuing, "But I'll bet we can talk my daughter Michelle into helping. She's close to your age, so maybe a story about how you are a friend of hers from school, your parents left you here to finish your last year but you've run into problems with a boyfriend who's turned into a stalker type pest so you need a place to stay for a little while. Long enough for the authorities to convince the young man to leave you alone and then you can return to your own home."

Gregory looked away from Madoka as he finished the proposed cover story. She had taken off her jacket when they arrived at the diner, and the way her very tight, blue, cheongsam-style shirt hugged her large firm breasts was incredibly distracting, especially when she moved like she was now, nodding her head up and down enthusiastically.

Gregory winced.

 _I'm a dead man; I'm a dead man walking. There's no way Karen is going to believe this story and she's going to kill me. The minute Karen sees those tits, I am a dead man._

Madoka was still nodding her head enthusiastically, "That would be wonderful, Gregory-san! Do you think your wife will believe the story? While I truly do appreciate the offer and will not deny I am in a bind, I also do not want to cause any disharmony in your home."

The earnest look on her pretty face had Gregory waving his hands to dismiss her concerns. "No, no, it'll be fine, I'm sure. Michelle will be glad to help with the cover story, and Karen will be fine with it. Besides, it's nearing Christmas; no one turns away someone in need around the Christmas holidays. That would just be wrong."

Madoka pursed her pink lips and furrowed her brows before nodding agreement. "If you are sure, Gregory-san. I only hope that Michelle-san likes me. I will make an extra effort to get on well with her so that we seem close friends."

"Good, I'm sure you'll manage just fine." Gregory smiled then tapped his cell-phone watch; the dial tone hummed immediately in his ear through the wireless earpiece he always wore when he was out of the house. He spoke to Madoka as he dialed his daughter's number, "Call her Mishi. It's a lot easier for most Japanese to pronounce than 'Michelle', like I rarely go by 'O'Donnell'. Everyone calls her Mishi."

He heard his teenaged daughter pick up the other end of the line and answer in her own excellent Japanese, "Tousan! Hi, what's up?"

"Hello Mishi-chan. I have a favor I need. Are you busy?"

Madoka smiled at Gregory from across the booth; apparently happy that she would not be sleeping in the rain and cold again. Her smile distracted Gregory so badly that he had to ask his daughter to repeat herself. This set Madoka into an even more distracting, chest-jiggling, giggle fit.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

"Mom, it'll only be for a while! Mado-chan doesn't have anywhere else to go, and her jerk boyfriend won't leave her alone! Dad said it was okay if it was okay with you, please?"

Gregory finished hanging his coat in the hall closet, trying to ignore the daggers his wife was staring at him for that last bit. He usually avoided getting into _that_ particular problem, having learned that "Dad said it was okay" was a quick trip to the doghouse for him with Karen, but in this case, it was a necessary evil.

Having Mishi asking while Madoka stood right there was extra leverage, insuring Karen would agree to the request, but also guaranteeing she would be in a piss-poor mood about it. And she would take that out on Gregory more than Mishi, as Gregory well knew. But, what else could he do? There was no way in hell Karen would normally go along with some eighteen-year-old female stranger staying with them. Especially one that looked like Madoka.

Thankfully, Mishi had taken right to the plot and agreed immediately to help Madoka. She had thrown herself entirely into the plan to convince Mom to okay Madoka moving in for a short while.

Karen cast a baleful eye at the short, blonde-haired, girl who was huddling in the entryway behind Mishi. Madoka had her hands in her jacket pockets and had her shoulders hunched up, trying to look small and harmless. Gregory was glad she hadn't taken off the jacket; one look at the form fitting silk cheongsam and the large breasts the silk outlined, and there was no force on earth that would get an agreement from Karen.

With a glare at Gregory, who brushed by the gathering in the entryway on his way to the bedroom to change out of his work clothes, Karen grumbled her assent. "Okay, fine, Michelle. Hello, Madoka, I'm sorry you're having such a difficult time with things. Why on earth did your parents leave you alone while they traveled?"

Madoka kept her eyes down as she answered, "Thank you Karen-san. My parents have made a habit of leaving me to care for myself since I was thirteen. It has never been a problem before but, well…"

Karen grimaced at the answer. "Well, I hate second guessing people but it doesn't seem right to leave a teenage girl all alone like that. How is your English? We have a rule to keep to English inside the apartment, though we are all fluent in Japanese. I don't want Michelle to forget our language by the time we go home."

Gregory smirked at that, glad his wife could not see it. The reason for the English in the home rule was Karen, not Mishi. When they first moved to Japan it was stressful for Karen, trying to speak Japanese all the time at her job with the Headquarters of the Japanese Red Cross. She needed some place to relax and not have the stress of speaking a foreign language. Moreover, she was not as fluent as Mishi or Gregory, a point that rubbed her wrong even after five years in Japan.

As Gregory walked into the kitchen to check and see if there was any hot coffee ready, he overheard Madoka's reply in perfect American English.

"I understand, Miss Karen. I do speak English and look forward to the opportunity to practice it. Thank you so very much for letting me stay in your home."

Gregory wondered at the blonde girl's fluency with English. She spoke American English so perfectly that he now wondered if she had learned Japanese as a second language. But her Japanese was as perfect as her English!

He _had_ to find out what this girl's story was.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

"Mishi, that was a delicious dinner. Do you often help cook?"

Madoka lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows on the comfortable queen sized bed in Mishi's bedroom. It was late, clean up after dinner was finished, showers were taken, and pajamas found and put on. Mishi had shown Madoka the small fish tank in her bedroom with her two goldfish, proudly boasting that she'd had them for over two years and weren't they awesome?

Madoka was tired. She knew she would have little trouble sleeping, even if she was sharing a bed with a girl she just met today. Compared to sleeping in an alleyway in the rain in freezing temperatures this was heavenly. The bed was western style instead of a futon and was large and very comfortable.

Mishi, sitting cross-legged nearby on the bed and flipping through a fashion magazine, nodded absently, "Yeah, I help most nights. Once I realized how big a deal Japanese boys, and their mothers, make about girls knowing how to cook I got motivated. It's so odd. You know, in America no one really cares if someone knows how to cook food from scratch. Some girls, some boys, enjoy doing it so they learn how, most don't. It's just not a big thing in the west. Here you can lose a boyfriend in a second if his mother thinks you can't cook. It's crazy. And since I'm American I had to be able to cook traditional Japanese better than any other girl in my class, just to keep someone's okasan from running me off right away."

Madoka did not reply to that, instead she considered what Mishi had said, and wondered about cultural biases and the blind spots they cause. Even though Madoka had never been allowed into the world outside the MBI laboratories and dorms she had been raised by people who had certain cultural biases so she had no doubt she herself was affected by them. Perhaps even more so than if she had been raised in the 'real world', since all of the Sekirei had such limited access to social instruction what little they were exposed to likely had an outsized influence on their worldview.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Mishi watched the pretty blonde out of the corner of her eye as she pretended to read the fashion magazine. Madoka was the prettiest girl Mishi had ever seen, in person or in movies or in a magazine or on TV. The mystery of how her Dad came to know the girl was driving Mishi crazy. There was no way the story he gave about her being homeless was straight.

Madoka was way too pretty to be anything except an idol. She should be on the cover of every magazine, staring in movies, and selling make-up to teenage Japanese girls who would kill for the perfect creamy skin, sky-blue eyes, and pouty pink lips the other girl was blessed with.

Not to mention the narrow waist, flat stomach, perky round butt, and incredible bounty of breasts she had.

Mishi pulled her pajama shirt closer around her own slender body and sighed. In a country where western looks were coveted, she had to be cursed with a short, slim, A-cup, body, just like most of her Japanese class-mates. She knew she had a great ass, but… glancing again at the tight tank top Madoka wore as pajamas and how the blonde was all but spilling out of the terminally stretched fabric, Mishi just shook her head in self-disgust. It just wasn't fair! And she was tired of being hit on by all the lolicons, too!

Mishi shook her head sharply; she had been ogling Madoka's breasts for some minutes without realizing it. And not just in an "academic interest" sort of way, either!

Mishi had "come out" to her parents last year just after she turned fifteen, bravely revealing to them her dark sexual secret: she was bi-sexual and attracted to girls almost as much as she was attracted to boys. It had taken weeks to build up the courage to tell her very socially liberal yet still Catholic parents this deep, dark, secret about herself. But honesty and being true to herself impelled her to tell them that sometimes she thought kissing a pretty girl would be fun.

It was a difficult confession to make, and her parents' reaction to it was _horrifying_ to the then-fifteen-year-old.

She had braced herself for condemnation and for being judged harshly, for reminders of how their Catholic faith considered such things to be a moral sin and she would burn in hell forever if she ever kissed a pretty girl. She was _ready_ to face such harsh judgments from her parents.

What she wasn't ready for was both of them shrugging their shoulders and saying, "That's nice sweetie. We'd like to meet your girlfriend".

She didn't _have_ a girlfriend! She hadn't ever had one, not like _that_! She'd never kissed a girl like that either! It was just something she thought might be fun, so she _had_ to confess her dark sexual secret to her parents, to 'come out of the closet' as a possibly mildly bi-sexual teenage girl and face all of the parental and social approbation that came with such deviancy!

It was just _really_ unfair that her parents reacted in such a way. There was no drama, no recriminations, no threats of hellfire or damnation, no being grounded for her personal life choices, nothing! The entire thing was such a horrible disappointment to Mishi that she pretty much tried to forget it ever happened.

Yet here she found herself ogling Mado's really impressive boobs, which were straining the cotton teal-colored tank top she had borrowed from Mishi's sleep-shirt drawer. And not just looking, but wondering what they'd feel like if she squeezed them!

Before she could work up a good blush in response to this self-realization, Mishi noticed that Madoka's face was pale, with a rather horrified expression upon it. Mishi looked up to meet Madoka's eyes questioningly. Oh no, had Madoka noticed her staring?

"Mado? What is it?" _Ohmygodshesawmestaringatherboobs!_

Madoka covered her mouth with a hand and stared at Mishi for a moment then gestured vaguely towards the closed door of the bedroom. "Can you not hear that, Mishi?"

Mishi stopped and listened, quickly enough realizing what it was that Madoka was overhearing through the closed door. Her parents were arguing in their bedroom and Mom's voice was loud enough to make out some of what was being said.

Mishi almost sighed in relief, glad that Madoka was not about to call her out for being a peeping pervert. She then sat up and took one of Madoka's hands, gently holding the blonde's slender fingers.

"Mado-chan, you really must be Japanese. Yes, my parents are arguing, in their bedroom. Yes, Mom doesn't think much about how her voice carries when she is mad and gets a good head of steam going. It's also just not that big a deal, Mado, though I know if this were a Japanese household such a thing would be a sign of a coming apocalypse. I promise, in an American household it might be a little embarrassing to have your parents' argument overheard by a friend but it's not the kind of shameful terrible thing it would be in a Japanese home. Just tune them out, that's what I do. Everything will be fine by morning. It's just not a big deal."

Mishi smiled at Madoka, trying to show the pretty blonde that she herself was not worried about the fact that her Mom was verbally thrashing Dad for giving permission without asking her first. And for putting her in a difficult position and no doubt a laundry list of other sins which Dad hadn't had a chance to properly beg forgiveness for lately. Her Dad was enough of a jerk, occasionally, to have a backlog of sins he'd not been called to account for. Mom made sure he didn't go too long in such a state.

Madoka nodded reluctantly then replied, "If you say so Mishi. But still I am terribly sorry for bringing such discord into your home! I should get my clothes and leave!"

"No, Mado, that isn't necessary!" Mishi tried again, this time with a wide grin. "Believe me. Dad knew Mom would be pissed about the way we worked her for permission for you to stay over the holidays. He knew she'd be pissed and did it anyway, so really, if you left he'd be getting raked over the coals for nothing. Can't have that, right?"

The blonde girl nodded reluctantly again, this time squeezing Mishi's fingers gently and smiling a little in response to Mishi's wide grin. "I am sure you know best, Mishi."

"Yes, exactly! See, I know best! So you're just staying right here in bed with me tonight!" Mishi blushed then continued quickly, "And tomorrow we'll do like Dad said. We've got his credit card and we're going to go do some shopping for you some clothes! Since there is absolutely no way you're going to fit into one of my bras. Oh, it will be fun! Now, turn up the volume on the music so we can't hear them arguing and let's get some sleep, hm?"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Sunday proved to be sunny though the temperature still required jackets and sweaters. The snow of the last few days was sticking to the shaded parts of the Shibuya Ward shopping district and the sky was startlingly blue as Madoka and Mishi stepped off the commuter train after a short ride from the station near the O'Donnell's apartment.

Madoka's blonde hair shined in the noontime sun, bouncy and full, spreading around her pink-jacket-clad shoulders. Even though Madoka was no taller than Mishi, the American girl was not worried about losing track of Madoka, given her hair was like a beacon amid the sea of blue-black-haired Japanese that filled the squares and walkways of the very modern shopping district she had chosen for their mission today.

The two girls quickly made their way from the commuter train depot towards the first shop on Mishi's list, 'Bare Necessities'.

"Tousan okayed us to spend fifty-thousand yen on the credit card, which should be enough to get the basics for you, Mado-chan. Since I doubt you are comfortable borrowing my panties and there's just no way you can use my bras, we'll take care of those first. Besides, we've got about an hour before my boyfriend, Tomo, said he will be joining us and I'll be damned if he's going underwear shopping with you as the model. No offense, but come on, I could never let Tomo see me naked again if he saw you trying on sexy underclothes."

Mishi laughed self-deprecatingly at that then laughed even louder at the look of shock on Madoka's face. Quickly covering her mouth with her hand, Mishi tried to reign in her American tendency to laugh loudly in public though Madoka's continuing embarrassment was not making it easy.

Madoka leaned in close and whispered, "Again? You mean you and your boyfriend have… done it? Really?"

Mishi put an arm around Madoka's shoulders and pulled her close as they walked towards 'Bare Necessities'. She grinned conspiratorially and answered, "Well, yeah, Mado-chan. Tomo and I have been together for six months and he's my boyfriend. Of course we 'do it' as often as he can get me alone! The only guys at my school who'd stay with a girl who didn't put out after that long are hopeless otaku's with acne and body odor. What was it like where you went to school? Are you saying you've never had sex?"

Madoka looked down at the pavement as they walked, the blush on her cheeks answering the question for her.

"Oh my god, seriously?" Mishi giggled and pulled Madoka into a one armed hug and said, "Hey, don't be embarrassed! I'm just kind of amazed given how gorgeous you are. You must have had every guy in your school chasing after you, plus all the teachers, the administrators, the bus driver, movie stars, royalty…"

The blonde Sekirei walked with Mishi's arm around her shoulders for a moment then asked, quietly, "You only have sex with your boyfriend because he would leave you if you did not?"

Mishi blinked in shock. Slowing their pace, she leaned close to Madoka's ear and said, "No, I wouldn't put it that way, not really. I mean, sure, Tomo is a great guy and good looking and I like him a whole lot… and he wants to have sex so after we saw each other for a while I agreed to do it with him. Honestly, if he'd never pushed for it we'd probably not be having sex but that's the way it is with all guys, right? I mean, they want what we've got and we're the ones who decide when and if they can have it. It's not like we're the ones chasing after what they've got between their legs, right? I mean, I guess some girls do, but they're the sluts, right?"

Madoka's cheeks were blazing red with embarrassment, bringing Mishi's good humor back to the fore.

With her new friend's obvious embarrassment with the subject Mishi dropped it, though she mentally marked this down as another oddity about the beautiful blonde.

"I am very sorry for all of this trouble, Mishi-san. Truly, you and Gregory-san do not need to do all this for me. It is more than enough that you are giving me shelter until I can find my friend who was supposed to meet me here in Shin Tokyo, spending money on me is too…"

Madoka did not get to finish her speech, as Mishi was waving her off while dragging the buxom girl by the hand towards the 'Bare Necessities' storefront.

"No, no, Mado-chan! Tousan said it was no trouble, and I'm saying it's no trouble too, so you'll just have to accept that your fate is to model sexy underwear for me for the next hour! Come on!"

Letting the American girl drag her along, Madoka accepted the inevitable and resigned herself to cooperating. "We cannot spend all of Gregory-san's money on underwear, Mishi-san! Some shirts and pants and maybe some shoes would be a good idea too, would it not?"

Mishi stopped right outside of the 'Bare Necessities' door, eyes gleaming in anticipation. "Yes! Genius! Shoes! We'll save that for last so that Tomo can be here for it! That'll show him, inviting himself along for our girls' day out shopping! Hah! Great thinking, Mado-chan!"

Visions of her boyfriend suffering through endless shoe shopping cheering her even more, Mishi took Madoka's hand again and pulled her through the doors for an hour of exploring undergarments that Mishi had always coveted but did not have the body to wear, herself.

But Madoka did! And judging by how the store's sales staff was already queuing up to serve the blonde beauty, Mishi could tell this was going to be great!

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

"I am really very sorry, Mishi-san. Please forgive me."

Madoka bowed her head humbly and waited for Mishi's response. The day had gone so well. Shopping with Mishi had been great fun until Mishi's boyfriend Tomo had joined them at the shoe store, and then everything had gone out of control. Madoka could not figure out what she could have done to change the outcome of the afternoon, but Mishi was mad at her so Madoka concluded that apologizing was the best plan, even if she didn't really understand what she could have done wrong.

Mishi was sitting at the head of her bed with her tablet in hand, pounding out letters on the pad with harder-than-necessary finger taps. She tried to ignore Madoka's apology and bowed head but after a few moments sighed and tossed the tablet onto the bedcover. Madoka waited, head still bowed in apology.

"We're in the apartment, so use English, Mado. And… it wasn't your fault. You didn't really do anything wrong; If anyone should apologize it's me. I shouldn't have gotten mad at you just because my boyfriend is a jerk and a pervert."

Madoka looked up through the hair that had fallen forward over her face to see if the angry expression Mishi had worn for the last several hours had changed. To her relief the slender American girl did not look mad anymore, just resigned and a bit tired.

Switching to English, Madoka tried again to apologize. "Still, Mishi, I caused such problems with you and your boyfriend. If I had not been there you would have had a much more pleasant day with Tomo."

Mishi just shook her head, her short, light brown hair swaying about. "No, Mado. I know I've been acting like it was your fault, but it wasn't. I should have figured what would happen if my boyfriend spent any time around you. Of course he was going to look and flirt and pay attention to you instead of me. You're like an idol; you're just too pretty to be resisted. But it'll be a cold day in hell before he gets another blowjob from me, I can tell you that."

Madoka replied in a tiny voice, sounding like she might faint at any moment at her American friend's bluntness, "I am very sorry…"

"Nyeh, let's just forget it, Mado." Mishi waved her hand dismissively then continued, "Guys are like that. I'm sorry I was cross with you about it, so let's just forget it and move on, okay?"

The blonde girl nodded agreement. "If you say so, Mishi. What do you want to do this evening?"

"Well… you can try on all the underwear we bought for you! Come on, try this one on first!"

Madoka shook her head and bowed to the inevitable, stripping off her jeans and shirt to entertain Mishi's underwear fetish. Posing in almost nothing for Mishi's fun was a lot better than her American friend sullenly ignoring her.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Late the next night Gregory looked up from his computer screen at the sound of the patio door sliding open. He probably should already have gone to bed, but Madoka had been out all evening and he was waiting up for her, though he'd not admit it. He was just up late playing 'World of GuildWars III', that's all.

Really.

Madoka slipped into the living room of the O'Donnell's apartment from the patio and pulled the sliding glass door shut behind her. She gave a little start when she noticed Gregory at his computer desk. Gregory smiled in response to the guilty-jump.

"Hey, Madoka. There's dinner in the microwave. Mishi put a plate together for you. If you're hungry you might want to warm it up first."

Peeling off her jacket, Madoka crossed the room to hang the covering in the hall closet. Her cheeks were pink from the cold night air and she wouldn't meet Gregory's eyes. As she hung up her coat she quietly said, in her perfect American English, "I am sorry to be so late, Gregory. I was out looking for my friend and time got away from me. I did not realize how late it was until it was already 10pm."

Gregory shook his head and turned to the computer screen to log out of his game, "It's okay, Mado; you're a grown woman. You don't answer to me. If you needed to be out late you needed to be out late. If it's going to happen much I might need to give you a key to the front door though. Wouldn't want you to have to sneak in through a window if it was late enough that I was already asleep and the patio door locked for the night, eh?"

Madoka smiled at this then went into the kitchen.

Gregory finished logging out of 'World of GuildWars III' and turned off the monitor of his desktop computer. The big matte-black computer was something of an anachronism, what with most people using tablets or wrist-phones or, in the other direction, large 3-d tanks, to play games or browse around the web. Gregory couldn't completely let go of his old-school desktop system, even if it had been upgraded in so many ways that it barely bore any resemblance to the computers he grew up using. He used it for gaming and as a storage server for his photography hobby, with automatic backup to a half dozen cloud server services running at all times.

Turning away from his desk, Gregory noticed Madoka was standing in the kitchen, staring at the microwave. He stood and walked into the kitchen, leaning past her to push the 'Reheat Sensor' button, then he smiled down at his pretty blonde houseguest, struggling mightily to meet her eyes instead of looking down the amazing cleavage of her v-cut shirt. "It'll beep when it's warm now."

Madoka turned her face up towards the much taller Gregory and smiled, saying "Thank you Gregory. For everything, truly." Her cheeks were still pink from the cold night air, giving her an innocent and charming blush. Madoka's physical closeness and the obvious gratitude shining from her face made Gregory's heart skip a beat.

Gregory retreated (and he did not for a second lie to himself that it wasn't a retreat) to the living room where he grabbed his cigarettes and stepped out onto the patio to enjoy the freezing cold night air. Watching the empty blue-lit street from behind the chest-high patio fence, he lit a cigarette and took a deep, satisfying, draw of the tobacco smoke.

Madoka had only been staying with them for two days and already Gregory found it difficult to keep his eyes off her when she was in the same room. It was a lot easier when Karen was around; Gregory didn't want his wife catching him ogling their houseguest. Karen was already prickly and touchy about the subject of Madoka as it was. It wouldn't be worth Gregory's life to get caught leering at Madoka's incredibly shapely body, her perfect, tight ass, her gorgeous…

"Gah!" Gregory lightly knocked his forehead into the top rail of the patio fence repeatedly. "Just… gah!"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Later in the week found Mishi and Madoka lying on Mishi's bed finishing a movie on the wall monitor Mishi had in her room. They were both comfortably attired in their sleeping clothes; Mishi in her usual tight cotton tank and low-slung loose-fitting sweatpants and Madoka in an even tighter teal-colored tank top and loose-fitting short-shorts.

As Mishi used her tablet to turn off the big wall-mounted monitor and disconnect from the media server in the living room she said, "Mado, I can't believe you'd never seen 'Lost and Delirious', it's a classic!"

Madoka remained leaning against the headboard of Mishi's bed, her blue eyes wide and watery from unshed tears over the tragic movie. "No, I had not seen that movie before. It was very… good, Mishi. I have never seen a movie like that."

Mishi tapped her tablet and queued up her sleeping music list for the room's speakers, the sounds of J-pop filled the bedroom. She was blushing a bit after watching the movie with Madoka. The affair between the two female leads was really lovely, and she wanted to share the movie with Madoka, but now she felt a little uncomfortable. She wasn't sure how Madoka would react to the subject matter or to the erotic scenes in the movie. Being so forward, even in such a limited way, was rather outside of Mishi's comfort zone. While still fiddling with the tablet's controls for the room's speakers, she asked, "What did you think?"

"I thought it was beautiful," Madoka said softly. "I do not understand why Tori and Paulie could not be together though. They loved each other, but Tori told her they could never be, and then Paulie died. Why did Tori tell her that? Why did Paulie kill herself?"

Mishi set her tablet on the bedside table and moved up next to Madoka, pulling the sheets back for the two of them. With the lights off and only the dim illumination of Mishi's tablet to show anything, Mishi and Madoka laid down and faced each other.

Mishi quietly answered Madoka's question, "Well, Tori broke up with Paulie because Tori's family would never accept her loving a girl. Lots of people used to think that two people of the same gender loving each other was wrong. They still do, really, but it's not as bad now as it used to be, I don't think. Sometimes love isn't enough, I guess." Mishi watched Madoka's face for any sign that the blonde girl was averse to same-gender relationships. "And Paulie died because she couldn't imagine living her life without Tori. Which is really kind of extreme, you know, most people wouldn't go that far, really. But I guess it makes for a better story if she kills herself instead of just going on and meeting another girlfriend years later or something."

Madoka lay on her side, looking at Mishi's face in the dim light, enjoying the tingling sensation in her belly as she looked into her American friend's eyes. She murmured, "Well, I think that is just wrong. They loved each other they should have been free to live as they wanted. It was very sad, at the end."

Mishi nodded in agreement, "I agree. But, Mado, is your family okay with same sex relationships? They would be okay if you had a girlfriend instead of marrying a guy?"

Madoka replied, hesitantly, "Some of the older… aunt's might have said something about not keeping the relationships girls had, because when we grew up we had to find… husbands and they would be angry if they thought their… wife also liked girls?"

Mishi nodded that she understood, to Madoka's obvious relief. Mishi said, "Well, old aunties are too conservative to know how the world really works nowadays. You can't pay too much attention to what they might think. Really, everyone should be able to follow the road that leads to their own happiness. Paulie and Tori would have lived happily all their lives if Tori hadn't spent so much time worrying about what her family thought."

Madoka said, "Yes, that is exactly so. If you find the person you are destined to be with, nothing else should really matter. I did like the movie, Mishi. Thank you for sharing it with me."

Mishi felt her cheeks get hot; Madoka's appreciation and the way the dim light illuminated the blonde's perfectly beautiful face made the young American girl almost breathless. She was both incredibly attracted to Madoka and scared of how intense that attraction was. It was on a completely different level than how she felt about her boyfriend and she'd had _sex_ with him so she considered her relationship with Tomo to be pretty serious. But the way she felt when she looked at Madoka was something else entirely.

"I'm glad you liked it, Mado. It really is one of my favorite movies." Mishi snuggled down into the blankets then looked back at Madoka, making up her mind to ask the question that had been bothering her all week. "Hey, Mado, you have to answer me a question. And you have to promise to tell me the truth, okay?"

Nodding reluctantly, Madoka said "Okay, I will tell you the truth. What is it?"

"What is it with you and my Dad? You can tell me, I won't tell anyone, I swear! No way he just found you at a donut shop needing a place to stay. Are you two… are you lovers?" Mishi barely stumbled over asking the question, difficult as it was to even think of her Dad and sex in the same sentence. Much less the way-long odds of her Dad scoring with a girl like Madoka, there just wasn't any way. Right? And cheating on Mom? Though Mishi _could_ imagine _any_ guy cheating if it was Madoka they had the chance with, even her Dad.

Madoka laughed, shaking her head. "No! No, he really did tell the truth. I met him outside the donut shop he stops at on Saturday mornings. No, he is very nice, and I am very glad he has offered me a place to stay with your family while I get things straightened out but no, we are not, um, involved, like that. He is way too old, do you not think? He is nice, and I have caught him looking a few times, but no, that would be just too gross really. With a guy that old?"

Mishi giggled and nodded, relieved that Madoka wasn't having an affair with her Dad. Not only did that make her feel better about her Dad not cheating on her Mom, but it meant that Madoka was unattached and available for Mishi to convince her to give her a chance!

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory, ear to the slightly open door of his daughter's bedroom, guiltily listened to Madoka's heartfelt denial of any interest in Mishi's old man. Significant emphasis on "old".

" _See? That's what you deserve, Greg, listening in because you thought you heard someone say 'Dad'. See, you feel a hundred times worse now, don't ya. Idiot."_

Shaking his head ruefully and wearing a self-deprecating smirk, he returned to bed, having already gone to the kitchen for a late night snack. Long experience in being around teenage girls as a high school teacher had taught him that forty-year-old guys are not what eighteen-year-old girls are looking for, no matter how deluded the forty-year-old man may be. He had seen a few of his peers in teaching fool themselves into thinking the occasional seventeen- or eighteen-year-old Senior who amused herself by practiced flirting skills on their teacher really meant what they were hinting at. It never ended well for the teacher and self-delusion of that sort was definitely an occupational hazard for anyone teaching senior level classes in any high school.

It was such a common risk that Administrators had to consider it when hiring teachers for Junior and Senior level classes. Gregory, at only thirty-five when he was hired, was certainly in the high-risk profile, but his being married for 15 years (at that time), and with children, put him into the "worth taking a chance on" pile of applications, instead of the "no way in hell" pile.

Moreover, beyond his dedication to his twenty years of married life and his family, Gregory _knew_ better than to fool himself like that. Forty-year-old guys like himself were _not_ what beautiful young women are looking for. Moreover, a young woman like Madoka, so obviously smart as well as incredibly gorgeous, deserved the very best and she would likely get it. She would not end up with some old and "gross" schoolteacher!

Refusing to pay any attention to the pang deep in his heart, stifling the useless wish that he could be twenty again so that he wouldn't be "gross", Gregory pulled the blanket up around his shoulders, his wife's back to him as usual, and tried to get to sleep.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

Started Sep 9 2013  
Completed Sep 27 2014  
Posted May 7 2015


	3. Bk1 - Ch3 The Truth Comes Out

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 1.3 – Ch 3 The Truth Comes Out

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Thursday, December 19th, 2019

One week to go until the winter school break began; Gregory O'Donnell was looking forward to the time off. Gregory loved his work at Tokyo Metro High, teaching Senior English as well as one honors Junior English course. He found the last week of each term to be the best part of the school experience. Finals exams pressures at the level he taught were immense for his students; parents, other family, peers, even the self-applied pressure of ambition, all conspired to put the Senior English students, and his one Junior Honors class, under a degree of stress that they had likely never encountered in their lives.

Gregory glanced at the five-part photo frame which he placed on the teacher's desk in each room he taught when he arrived at that classroom each day, each frame containing a photo he had taken which meant something to him in regards to his profession. This time of year the photo his eye drifted to was the student on the train at final's time. The young man in the photo was aboard a crowded train, sitting on his heels in the aisle since there was no room on the seats for him. He had his forehead resting on the handle of his umbrella and one hand holding onto the chrome bar mounted to the floor and ceiling of the train for passengers to steady themselves with. The student had his eyes closed, his uniform was neat and pressed, his satchel bulging with schoolwork waiting to be done. And hanging off the front of the satchel was a small plushy teddy bear, seemingly out of place with the rest of the image.

To Gregory, the photo exemplified the great anxiety his students experienced, especially at semester finals. The adult expectations that pressed down upon people who were often still children with teddy bears, inside.

The strain his students were under often revealed previously hidden elements of their character. Who among them would dig deep and find reserves that they were previously unaware of, allowing them to study that extra hour, remember just that much more vocabulary, comprehend that one additional obscure grammatical rule?

Who would dig deep and find… nothing? No hidden reserves, no extra insight, no heretofore unknown gift for languages. No one spoke of this sort of student. It was assumed by everyone that all students would prosper in a high pressure, high stakes, testing environment if they were convinced of the utter seriousness of the exams, if they believed in their hearts that their entire future depended on them doing well on their tests.

However, it just wasn't true. Not all students _had_ hidden reserves or unknown talents that were just waiting the right time to be revealed. In fact quite a few were already operating at 100% of their capability, just to keep the grades they were already making. Especially in a difficult class such as Gregory O'Donnell's English Language course. Would this student crack under the pressure? Would they fall to the temptation of cheating? Would they learn that it's not possible to exceed your potential?

 _That_ was a lesson that many students learned too late or never. It was nevertheless a truth Gregory tried to help his students realize: A person cannot exceed their potential. If it seems they exceeded their potential, the only thing that meant was that an inaccurate assessment of the person's potential had originally been made.

Sometimes a person was a B student in English because that was all they could manage. Gregory explained to his students that he himself was a B student in both High School and College level Calculus. No matter how much effort he invested, he never achieved a better grade in Calculus. Gregory had been fortunate to have a High School teacher who explained to him that he had likely found the limits of his potential in Calculus. This understanding, this acknowledgment of his own limitations, allowed Gregory to spend his time more wisely in efforts to excel in subjects he could still improve in.

A willingness to accept a B in Calculus allowed him the freed up resources to achieve Honors in Languages. And that had mattered far more than if he had managed to increase his Calculus grade by a percentage or two.

Gregory kept his eye out for the handful of such students in each of his classes for whom the limits of their own potential was what kept them from higher grades and better test results. Those students were the ones he made a point to council before each semester's final exams, making sure they understood that beating ones head against a wall was _not_ actually good academics. No matter how many speeches about 'giving 110%' they were subjected to by other teachers or their parents or their peers, at least _one_ authority figure was going to speak the truth to them. At least _one_ teacher would explain to them that having a realistic understanding of who they were and what their abilities truly were would make them far better academics than pissing into the wind would.

At which point the student would usually gape at their straight-laced English Language teacher for using such a colorful idiom. But it got the point across.

All of the students at Tokyo Metro High were used to the pressure of high stakes testing: just getting into the school required them each to pass the High School Entrance Exams with very high marks. Tokyo Metro wasn't the most prestigious High School in Japan, or even in Shin Tokyo itself, but it was certainly in the top 5% nationwide, with only three other High Schools in Shin Tokyo rating higher. But as there were 45 High Schools in Shin Tokyo Gregory felt very fortunate to have landed his position at Tokyo Metro.

Gregory wasn't in charge of the English Department but there was only one person above him in the organizational chart for the Department, a young and progressive teacher who valued Gregory greatly and did not hesitate to use Gregory as the (green-eyed, blond-haired) face of the school's English Department.

Gregory understood and did not take offense. If it helped the English Department, it helped the school. And if it helped the school then it helped Gregory O'Donnell.

The previous teacher who had held the position that Gregory now enjoyed had arranged for herself the luxury of her own classroom. Gregory knew that such a perk was greatly desired by the teachers in every High School in Japan, so when he first arrived he shocked his peers by requesting the private classroom for Senior English be used for other purposes as best determined by the English Department Head. He would be honored to teach his students in their Homerooms.

While his peers thought he was crazy for giving up a permanent classroom his immediate superior viewed this as not only humble and gracious on the part of his new American teacher but also realized Gregory O'Donnell was making an effort to prove his priorities were to the school and not only to his own, personal, benefit. It was a move that was more Japanese than Japanese.

Ever since that day, Gregory was in his boss's good books.

Besides, teaching English did not require so much in the way of supplies and fixtures that its own room was needed, not with the sort of technology available in Japan in 2020 A.D.

Gregory sat at the Homeroom teacher's desk, watching as his last class of the day (the Junior Honors class) wrapped up their pre-exam practice tests. Gregory would spend most of tonight reviewing the practice tests so that he could give his students the results before the weekend. That way they would have the weekend to study for their term finals knowing what they needed to focus on.

It would make for a very long night tonight, but it was one of the things Gregory felt he owed his students. They were all working very hard; the least he could do was to make sure they were working on the right things.

Carefully checking the screen on his school-issued tablet to make sure all of the students practice tests were logged and locked down on the storage server, Gregory absently waved to the classroom President as she exited the Homeroom.

One convenient aspect of the Junior Honors English class was that there were no more classes after. The classroom student President did a very good job of making sure the room was clean and ready for the next day, so the Homeroom teacher had the habit of leaving the campus directly from the Teacher's Lounge, right as the last bell rang for the day. This allowed Gregory to wrap up his day in the peace and solitude of the second floor Junior Honors Homeroom. Far preferable to having to pack himself to the teacher's lounge to take care of last minute business at his little-used cubicle desk before going home.

Making sure the locked and logged practice tests were now all duplicated on his own tablet's internal memory as well as backed up to one of his own cloud storage accounts, Gregory then put the school tablet into his briefcase and locked the case up. Gregory then walked around the classroom to make sure the juniors had prepared everything for the next day's classes. As he finished his circuit of the room he was shocked to see Sanjunana Madoka standing at the door of his classroom.

"Madoka? What in the world are you doing here?" Gregory was shocked out of his manners. It was almost unheard of that someone not in school uniform be wandering around the school campus; either in school uniform or carrying a clearly displayed Staff ID. It was not impossible to sneak in but it certainly _would_ require sneaking.

Gregory waved Madoka into the room, belatedly noticing the stress and worry in her expression and body language. Gregory could only shake his head as he noticed that even these negative emotions were displayed in the most appealing way possible on Madoka's face. He would bet that she was one of those rare females who could look beautiful even while weeping.

"I am very sorry to have intruded on your workplace, Gregory-san. But I was not far from here when I encountered someone who I had to get away from, someone I had to hide from, and I did not know anywhere else I could flee to where I might be safe." Madoka crossed the room while she spoke and Gregory allowed himself the guilty pleasure of watching her walk. The natural grace the young woman displayed in as simple a task as walking across a classroom was a joy to behold. The way she filled out a pair of tight blue jeans was an equal joy he had to admit.

Truly, a guilty pleasure.

She looked out the second floor windows that overlooked the main courtyard of the school and beyond that provided a nice view of Shibuya Ward in late afternoon sun, watching not only the sidewalks below but also the rooftops of the opposite wing of the school, across the courtyard.

Gregory closed the door to the classroom to insure no late passerby overheard whatever Madoka needed to tell him, then moved to lean against the front of the teacher's desk. His jacket was already on, his briefcase was packed; he only needed to grab the case to be ready to leave the school. He watched Madoka scan the rooftops of Tokyo Metro High and realized whatever secrets his somewhat mysterious houseguest had been keeping were possibly coming home to roost. He hoped those secrets did not cost him and his family more than they could afford.

"Mado-chan, how about you tell me what's going on? I know you've got bigger problems than just losing your wallet and having a friend who left you high and dry in Shin Tokyo. I haven't pressured you for your secrets because they are your secrets but…" Gregory fell silent, waiting to hear what the beautiful blonde at the classroom window would say.

Madoka remained silent for several minutes, obviously gathering her thoughts. She looked away from the window and met Gregory's eyes and it seemed as though she were trying, desperately, to make a terribly important decision. She looked away from Gregory and sighed resignedly, then walked over to stand next to the teacher's desk, where she began nervously adjusting the position of the various items on the desk.

She spoke, quietly, not looking up at Gregory. "If I tell you, you will very likely think me insane. Or a liar."

Madoka unzipped her pink, puffy, jacket, then pulled it off and draped it across the back of the teacher's chair. She then pulled the tight fitting long-sleeved t-shirt she was wearing down to straighten it, which had the coincidental effect of prominently showing off her amazingly firm, high, and large, breasts.

It seemed to Gregory, from careful observation over the past week, that a full fifty percent of all Madoka's movements and postures had the coincidental effect of prominently showing off her amazingly firm, high, and large, breasts.

However, on the one hand, he admitted he _might_ be a biased observer of the phenomenon. On the _other_ hand, he had caught his _daughter_ eyeballing Madoka's accidental and coincidental mammary show just yesterday, so he gave himself the benefit of the doubt. It _might_ not just be him.

And wasn't _that_ an awkward meeting of the eyes, when Mishi looked over and caught _him_ catching _her_ ogling The Rack? Gregory, of course, reacted as only a father could in that situation: he grinned ear-to-ear at his teen daughter, who was, appropriately, mortified to within an inch of her life.

Gregory snapped his eyes upwards as Madoka began to turn to face him.

Gregory had become quite good at snapping his eyes upwards around Madoka. He hoped.

She turned to look at Gregory and met his green-eyed stare with her own sky-blue gaze. Sky-blue eyes which showed a level of fatigue and worry that Gregory had not seen from Madoka before. It looked like another person Gregory knew might be learning about limits and potential and how just working harder and wishing harder will not make the impossible happen.

"Or you might even believe me. That is probably the scariest possibility. You would have to be half-mad yourself to believe my story, Gregory-san. Unfortunately, I just cannot keep this a secret anymore and in all truth… what I have to say will likely be common knowledge the world over within a few months. There is really no way to keep the truth bottled up, not now, not with the Plan starting here in Shin Tokyo."

Gregory couldn't help but notice that Madoka still hadn't told him anything. Whatever her secrets they must be far bigger than the wilder scenarios he had imagined for worst-case: that she was involved in drug running, or was the escaped love-slave of a powerful Yakuza lord. Gregory propped one leg up on the desk and turned a bit to watch the young woman's face as she struggled with getting the words out. He waited patiently; one of the benefits of raising his own kids through teenager-hood was that he had learned patience when it came to getting a secret out of them. And watching Madoka's face was never difficult, so the wait was pleasant anyway.

"Since being released I have come to realize there really is no way our secrets are going to remain secret. Everyone in this city carries those phones that have really good cameras and video recorders built into them. And some, like you, carry even better cameras everywhere, just to take pictures of things you like. So there really is no way Shin Tokyo can be where the Plan takes place and the whole world not find the truth behind the secrets MBI has been keeping for twenty years." Madoka hugged herself, her body language telling Gregory that she was not only scared of whatever was pursuing her but scared of what she was saying.

He could only wonder how bad this was going to get.

Madoka met Gregory's eyes again and asked, "Will you promise not to tell anyone what I am going to say? It will not truly matter by this time next year but for now it could still be dangerous to me, and to you, if it becomes known that I told you this."

Gregory considered this for a moment. "I'll promise to not go yelling it from the rooftops. But, Mado-chan, it would be dishonest of me to make that promise and not tell you that if, in my best judgment, telling someone what you tell me will save lives or reduce the risk my own family might be under… I would likely tell. That might not be good enough, in which case I understand. But I can't make such an oath blind and you should understand that sharing something important with me means you're going to have to trust my judgment."

She considered what Gregory said then nodded, "That is good enough, Gregory-san. I trust you and you have impressed me as someone who has good judgment. You know more than anyone I've ever known, including the scientists at MBI. And, really, it might not matter. A year from now none of this will likely matter."

"Okay then," Gregory smiled crookedly at the diminutive blonde girl. Gregory reached over and put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it lightly, reassuringly. He did so reluctantly, as it marked the first time he had ever deliberately touched the young woman, but she so obviously needed reassurance. "Hit me with it and let's see if we can find some solutions to whatever is deviling you, okay?"

Madoka nodded agreement then smiled up at Gregory, the first full smile he'd seen from her since she entered the classroom. Like always, her smile made his heart skip a beat, her beauty shining like a beacon, warming his heart. And, like always, it scared Gregory just a bit because he _knew_ that Madoka wasn't for the likes of him, but he felt pulled towards her in spite of that certain knowledge.

Gregory removed his hand from her shoulder as if he had been touching a hot stove. Fortunately, Madoka did not notice or she pretended not to, as she looked away towards the windows again.

"First, I am being chased by someone, her name is Katsuragi. She works for a man named Higa. I do not know if that is his family name or his given name, but he is who she… works for. She saw me earlier this afternoon. I know of this man she works for, Higa, and I know he is a very bad person, Gregory-san. She saw me but I was lucky and jumped onto a city bus that was passing by at that moment, just getting into the doors before they closed. It was really nothing but sheer luck she did not see me, did not know where I disappeared to. She probably did not understand what a city bus was, either, so that no doubt helped."

Madoka paused and shivered, "It was near here and I did not dare try to walk back to the apartment. She would have caught me, I do not doubt it."

Gregory frowned at that. "Why is this Higa person having his people chase you? How do you know him? Have you had dealings with him?"

"No, and I have never spoken to him or any of his people before last week at all. He is not after me specifically. He is after anyone like me and the girl who I ran into this afternoon, Katsuragi, is someone like me who he caught and now she… works for him and is looking for more of us to bring to him."

Shaking his head and continuing to frown, Gregory replied, "But that doesn't explain why or what's special about you that he'd be chasing 'people like you', Mado. Come on, spit it out, let's get to the bottom of this then once that's out of the way we can get into the details, okay?"

Madoka nodded her head but didn't speak for a moment. She chewed her lower lip nervously, and then looked up at Gregory. "Well, then the real first thing you should know, Gregory-san, is that I am not exactly from around here."

Gregory nodded, "Okay, that's not hard to guess just from your appearance, in spite of your perfect Japanese."

Madoka looked away, a bit of pink coloring her cheeks. "No," she continued, "I mean I am really, really, not from around here. As in, not from this world. Earth. Not… not really."

Gregory stopped nodding.

"Say again?"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

The late afternoon winter sunlight filled the classroom with a warm glow. Madoka pulled on the hem of her long t-shirt nervously, looking down and not meeting Gregory's eyes. She knew she needed to tell Gregory everything but it was difficult. She had not realized how difficult it would be. There had been so much emphasis put on keeping the truth behind the Sekirei secret and keeping the Sekirei Plan secret that it was not easy to just go against that. They had even been told that human's would kill them if they knew the truth or they would lock them up and do experiments on them and never let them go.

Ironic, that last threat, all things considered.

But she also knew she was in over her head and she had only been out for a couple of weeks. She _needed_ someone like Gregory to help her, someone who knew how the real world worked, someone who understood what an 'ATM' was and how you could get cash out of one.

Someone who knew what 'cash' was, for that matter.

She'd never appreciated before how ill prepared for the real world she and her fellow Sekirei were. She wondered how many would end up with horrible men like Higa or his slimy henchman Kakizaki simply because the Sekirei did not know any better, did not know how to navigate the day-to-day challenges of life in Shin Tokyo in 2020 A.D.

"Say again?"

She could hear the mix of confusion and irritation in Gregory's voice. She cringed at the irritation. She did not want to make Gregory mad at her; she _liked_ Gregory, in spite of all the creepy old guy looks she noticed he gave her. He had taken her in and made sure she had food, clothes, and shelter and showed nothing but concern and care for her, for the whole last week. Moreover, he had kept his word to not take advantage. She did not really mind him looking; he'd not done more than look, for which she was very grateful.

If not for Gregory she'd have been in a great deal of trouble, possibly already captured by Higa or some other terrible person who could force her to accept them as her Ashikabi, then she would be doomed for the rest of her entire life. There was no way to break a Sekirei/Ashikabi bond; everyone knew that it was "forever and ever". Those were the words every Sekirei spoke after their bond with their Ashikabi was made and for good reason.

She owed Gregory everything at this point; he had almost literally saved her life! She did not want him angry or disappointed with her!

It wasn't supposed to be like this! Madoka thought she would have more time to look for her destined mate. But with the scare today, with Katsuragi spotting her, Madoka knew she had to find an Ashikabi and fast, even if it wasn't the perfect person or ideal partner she'd hoped to find. Once she was bound to someone, anyone, then she would be safe from monsters like Higa.

She'd had a small bit of 'reaction' to Mishi-chan. Mishi was cute, she was smart, and she was kind. Madoka could do far worse, she realized that now. So now she just needed to get Gregory to take her back to the apartment in his big orange vehicle, keep her away from Katsuragi long enough to get to Mishi and see if she could convince Mishi to be her Ashikabi… or failing convincing her just kissing Mishi as hard as she could and hope it worked out anyway.

Anything would be better than suffering Katsuragi's fate. _Anything_. Especially as Madoka knew she would be of no use to a man like Higa. She was not strong, fast, or capable in a fight. She couldn't help him win the Sekirei Plan so her fate would be that of a worthless tool, discarded and never even considered again.

No, she had to get back to the apartment and find Mishi. She felt that little bit of reaction, she knew Mishi could wing her if she tried.

"Yes, Gregory-san. Just like you heard me say. I am not truly human and not from this world." Madoka realized how crazy that sounded but it was the truth so she had to start there or Gregory wouldn't cooperate. He was too good at getting right to the heart of things for any deception on her part to work on him, she knew that.

When Gregory didn't reply after a minute, Madoka looked up to see if she could judge his reaction to her statement. He was still sitting on the edge of the teacher's desk, one leg up on the desk, the other leg down with his foot on the ground. His face was no longer smiling; in fact he wore an expression of intense focus she'd not seen on him before. It was a little intimidating, frankly.

"Gregory-san?"

Gregory's green eyes met hers again and he grimaced and looked away from her before speaking. Madoka was surprised at how much it hurt that he wouldn't look at her.

"Let's set aside whether or not I believe what you are saying is true. No, Mado-chan," Gregory held up a hand to stop her protests, "I'm not saying you are lying to me. But you might have been told something that isn't accurate or any of a hundred other explanations that are more likely than the chances that you are an intelligent life form from another world that just happens to look entirely human and happens to look exactly like an almost ideally beautiful human at that. Let's not get into the odds of xenobiological parallel evolution and the arguments... No, there is no point in that right here, this minute. Let's assume what you're saying is true enough for our purposes right here and now."

Gregory grimaced then continued, "So, you're an alien and you're being pursued by another alien like you, this girl Katsuragi. She is working for this man, Higa. Is Higa one of your people?"

Madoka breathed a sigh of relief. Even if Gregory was not agreeing with the entirety of what she had told him at least he was willing to act as though it were true and that is really all that mattered, like he said, right here and now.

"No, Higa is a human. And yes, Katsuragi is one of my people." Madoka continued in a small, barely-audible voice, "We are called Sekirei. My 'people' as you put it. We are the Sekirei."

"Like the little bird? The black and white bird, called a 'wagtail'?"

Madoka blinked and looked back up at Gregory. "Yes, just like the little bird. Which is maybe a coincidence, I do not know. We have a lot of bird ancestry, like humans have monkey ancestry."

Gregory shook his head at that, though Madoka wasn't sure if he was disagreeing with her statement that the Sekirei were descended from avians or that humans were descended from monkeys.

But everyone knew humans were descended from monkeys.

"Okay, again, Mado-chan, we'll let that slide for now, since it's not really important for you to understand the difference between 'common ancestor' and 'descended from' at this point. Nor is it important for you to understand that avians are not mammals and you are very… very definitely a mammal." Gregory looked like he was struggling to meet her gaze.

It was a look he regularly got when speaking to her and she still had not figured out what it meant, but he was right, it really did not matter right now about the birds and the monkeys.

Gregory muttered, seemingly to himself, "Whoever named you after a bird that is also called the 'wagtail' had quite the naughty sense of humor though, I'll grant that."

Madoka didn't know exactly what Gregory meant by that but since it didn't seem important right now she let it go. She would try to ask him what he meant, later. If she ever got the chance, of course. The little blonde Sekirei tried to continue the confession of her secrets; she knew they had to get going and as soon as possible.

"Gregory-san, the important thing to understand is that there are only just over 100 of us on this world. A man named Hiroto Minaka discovered us in 1999; he and his minions discovered the ship that we had come in. It had crashed in the ocean a thousand years ago and we were all in suspended animation or… something like that." Madoka stopped her explanation and looked at Gregory; his expression indicated he had a question. Or a thousand questions.

"Do you mind if I get a notebook out and take some notes, Mado-chan? Also, 'minions'? Really?"

Madoka shrugged, causing Gregory to get that funny look on his face again, then replied, "Well, that is what the Professor always said, that he and his minions discovered us."

Elsewhere in Shin Tokyo, Sahashi Takami felt the urge to go beat Hiroto Minaka into a bloody smear.

Gregory searched through his briefcase and pulled out a twin wire bound A4 notebook with a black cover as well as a ballpoint pen. He flipped through the notebook quickly to confirm it was a new, blank, notebook, turned it to the second page and started writing. Without looking up he asked, "You mentioned MBI earlier. I assume Hiroto Minaka is the same as the eccentric genius Hiroto Minaka who owns MBI almost entirely and has been in the news so much lately for making some revolutionary… technological breakthroughs…"

Gregory stopped writing and looked up at Madoka; his face showing a great deal less confidence than it was just a minute ago.

Madoka answered, "Yes. He was known to us as The Professor because he was the person who taught most of us about the Sekirei Plan and he was in charge of everything. I really am not sure why he was called a Professor but no one dared really question him about it. He was not ever mean to us though, other than requiring us to do our exercises and physical exams without clothes on."

Gregory twitched at that but soldiered on bravely. "You were all discovered in 1999 and you've lived isolated, imprisoned, kept away from everyone by MBI all this time? Why are you out now, did you escape? What about this… Katsuragi?"

"No, I did not escape, Gregory-san. It is the Sekirei Plan, which the Professor has made for all of us to participate in. MBI is releasing a few of us into the city every week, starting a couple of weeks ago; I was the fifth Sekirei released into the city, though I do not know the identities of who were released before me. They were to release three to five of us a week for the next several months. They kept us apart from each other a lot; I do not think I personally met more than forty of my fellow Sekirei the entire time I was in the MBI Sekirei Labs. And most of those who I did meet I did not know for long."

Madoka scowled, her eyes seeing images from years ago. "Part of their experiments with us involved us forming then breaking relationships and some groups were kept together and some were broken apart after a time and they kept some pairs together for years then separated them to see what would happen… there was a lot of unhappiness with how MBI kept tearing us apart from each other. There were only five of us in Group 11 who were there from our earliest childhood through this year. And even I was removed from Group 11 eventually; I spent the last maybe three months isolated."

Gregory kept writing in the notebook and growled under his breath, "Inhuman. You don't just experiment on people, even if it's just social experimentation, without their consent. These guys are guilty of violating a huge raft of laws." Gregory paused his writing and looked up at Madoka. "We'll come back to 'Group 11' and who was in it and for how long later. How long were you there?"

She shook her head, "I do not really know for sure, Gregory-san. All of my life, I know that. There was not any real way to tell or record the passage of time. I did not know what a week was or a month was until a long time after we learned to read and write. I told you I spent my last maybe three months isolated because I cannot be sure how long it was. Even after they finally taught us about calendars and years and weeks and months there were not any calendars in the Sekirei Labs. Some counted days, but even that could be messed up easily. So you just guessed or did not worry about it." Madoka laughed at that, a slightly bitter sound, very unlike her usual laugh. "Sometimes it would seem like weeks had passed and other times months, but there were also drugs we were given that would make us sleep for a period of time and we would wake up having had changes made to our bodies and even our minds sometimes."

"Like what kind of changes?"

Madoka sighed and returned to nervously pulling on the hem of her t-shirt. "Like we would wake up older or noticeably taller or with more muscles or sometimes a Sekirei who was having difficulty controlling their abilities would go for a round of 'adjustments' and come back more controlled. That is what it was called, 'adjustments'. My last round of adjustments was a couple of months ago. I did not notice any changes from that cycle of adjustments and after that I was kept away from any of the Sekirei in the labs and just given things to study and exercises to do as well as listening to the most boring recorded lectures about the Sekirei Plan and how wonderful the Professor is."

Madoka rubbed her forehead, obviously not happy about the later part of her life in the MBI Sekirei Labs. "Then they put me in a van and dropped me off in the city with my MBI debit card and a fake identity. My fake identity card said I was named Sanjunana Madoka because we all had numbers, even on our ship they said our tanks were numbered. So I am Sekirei Number 37 Madoka." The way Madoka said this got Gregory's attention.

Gregory was no longer taking notes but instead was listening to Madoka's story and watching her face while she spoke of how MBI treated her and the other Sekirei. He stood, then came around the desk to stand near her, and held out his right hand, "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Sekirei 37, Madoka."

Gregory smiled as he said this but it still warmed Madoka's heart to be greeted by her name and by someone who knew who she really was finally. She grasped Gregory's hand and replied, "It is a pleasure to meet you as well, O'Donnell Gregory."

They both laughed at this and Gregory reached across the desk to retrieve his notebook then paused before opening it to continue making notes. Madoka waited to hear what Gregory was thinking, she really didn't know where to go from here.

"Mado-chan. As interesting and important as your history in the MBI labs or dorms or whatever it was is and as important as learning who else in addition to Hiroto Minaka was involved in the experiments on you and your fellow Sekirei is… those things probably aren't critical right now, this minute. You said you were being chased by another Sekirei, Katsuragi, who works for a human man, Higa. Why are they chasing you and what can we do to make you safe? Let's focus on that right now, because it is getting late and we need to get moving I think."

Blonde hair bobbing as Madoka nodded her head enthusiastically in agreement, she said, "Yes, yes, absolutely right Gregory-san. First, why Katsuragi and Higa are chasing me then what we might do to stop them. The two things are related, of course."

Madoka started pacing along the wall behind the teacher's desk, hugging her arms around her midsection nervously. "One of the most important things we Sekirei have to do, right away when we are released into the city for the Sekirei Plan, is find our Ashikabi."

"Hold on, Mado-chan. Ashikabi? I don't recognize that word."

"Well, Gregory-san, our Ashikabi are our destined mates, the person who a Sekirei is bound to for ever and ever. It is a bond that can never be broken once established and we are supposed to find our Ashikabi in the city then…" Madoka broke off here, unable to meet Gregory's gaze.

"And then? What, Mado-chan?"

Madoka murmured her answer while fiddling with some papers on the teacher's desk, "Well, the Ashikabi and Sekirei kiss and that is how the bond is made. There is a display of psychic power that looks like wings that comes from the Sekirei's back so it is also called 'winging'. A Sekirei is either 'winged' or 'unwinged'." She looked back up and raised her chin a bit. "I am unwinged, because I have not found my Ashikabi yet. I was hoping to find someone who was suited just right for me but I learned not long after I was released into the city that it is possible for a human who has Ashikabi potential, like this man Higa, to wing more than one Sekirei."

She scowled, angry and offended, "And I learned it is possible for an Ashikabi to force himself on a Sekirei, to force a winging. This bonds her to him forever even though he is not the right person for her! It is a horrible thing, Gregory-san, and no one ever even mentioned it was possible in the MBI lectures. I do not think they know about it. But it is horrible and a fate worse than death, any Sekirei would agree with me describing a forced winging that way."

Gregory looked like he wanted to return to taking notes but resisted the temptation. "Okay. So even worse than rape, since it results in a lifetime of slavery to a man you might hate or who might be totally evil. So of course, if this is possible someone found out right away. You saw Higa do this to someone? Katsuragi?"

Madoka nodded, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears suddenly. "I did, Gregory-san. It was the most horrible, terrifying, thing I have ever seen in my life. He did not even try to kiss her; she was being held captive by another Sekirei who was already bound to him and he… he… he spit in her mouth, Gregory-san! And when that did not work he licked his finger and just… stuck it into her mouth, and he looked like it disgusted him to have to touch her at all!" Madoka wiped at her eyes before continuing, voice choked with emotion, "That did it, her wings burst into light and you could see she was now bound to him forever and ever."

Madoka sniffled, and then looked up at Gregory, anger and fear contorting her angelic features. "It was not supposed to be like this! We Sekirei were supposed to find the person who would love us and then in the Sekirei Plan we are all supposed to fight and contest with each other until there is one winner and they get to ascend. I do not know what that really means, so do not bother asking. Whoever is the last standing is supposed to win the great prize from Hiroto Minaka. Some think the winner will get to live with their Ashikabi forever, which sounded like a wonderful and romantic thing when I thought like all the others that an Ashikabi meant a person we loved and who loved us."

Gregory looked tempted to reach out and squeeze her shoulder again. Madoka pressed on, trying to get to the end of her story. "But now all of it sounds like a horrible thing that is going far worse than I ever imagined before I was released into the city. I really do not know what to do next, Gregory-san. If Katsuragi, or any of Higa's other Sekirei, catch me they will drag me to him and he will forcibly wing me and then my life will be over."

Madoka looked into Gregory's eyes and went on, intently, "I must bond with an Ashikabi now, before the worst can happen. Then I will be proof from any other Ashikabi's efforts because nothing can break the bond between a Sekirei and her Ashikabi, nothing. I do not care anymore if they are the perfect person I wanted or if they are exactly who fate meant for me! I just want to be safe from what happened to poor Katsuragi!"

Gregory listened to her with a growing look of puzzlement on his face. He started to ask a question several times after Madoka was finished speaking but stopped each time and reconsidered. Finally he settled on asking, "Mado-chan, how can you know if someone is possible to be an Ashikabi? Can you feel it? Do they look like something specific?"

Madoka shook her head, valiantly trying to get her emotions back under control. "No, they might look like any person at all. At first I thought any human that I might kiss would wing me but I realized that cannot be right. There are too many situations where I might drink from a glass that you drank from or such and it really just cannot be that easy. So I think it is only certain humans who have the potential to be Ashikabi. That was a popular theory among the other Sekirei, that only special humans could… um… mate… with us."

Gregory smirked a little, "Yes, I would imagine that was a popular theory in a dorm full of beautiful, teenaged girls who were all speculating about their destined Prince Charming. No mere normal monkey descendent, but only a special person, indeed."

The Sekirei nodded her head, realizing how juvenile and even insulting that sounded, now. "I did not mean any offense, Gregory-san…"

Gregory waved his hands, smiling and answered, "No, no, it's fine, Mado. I find it kind of funny and very much the sort of thing any teenage girls might say or think. Don't worry." He glanced out at the nighttime view of the Tokyo Metro High courtyard and sighed, "It's already getting late; whatever we need to do we need to do it now. Do you have any candidates for Ashikabi who we can get you to so you can kiss them and then be safe from bastards like this man, Higa?"

"Yes, there is someone who I had a slight reaction with. I think this person could be an Ashikabi, but the only way to know for sure is to try to kiss them and see if the bond happens, if my wings appear."

"Okay, great, then let's go, Mado-chan! Where is this guy?"

Madoka twisted her shirt hem nervously, noting that the fabric was beginning to disintegrate under the abuse, and then let her eyes wander around the room, avoiding Gregory's gaze. She almost whispered, "It is a girl, Gregory-san. It was… um… Mishi-chan. It was Mishi-chan who I could feel a small reaction with."

Gregory, closing his briefcase back up after tossing his black notebook in and getting ready to rush for the door, stopped in his tracks.

"Say again?"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Lights from the storefronts of Shibuya Ward and from other vehicles glared on the windshield of the Jeep as Gregory and Madoka drove in silence, hoping to get from Tokyo Metro High to the O'Donnell's apartment without running into any trouble, especially any trouble like Katsuragi.

Gregory rested his right forearm atop the steering wheel as he drove, partially on autopilot, mind occupied by thoughts of his blonde passenger, thoughts of his daughter Mishi, thoughts of crazy stories of battle royale in a metropolis of 19 million souls, and alien bird women, and crazed lunatics who run trillion yen multinational companies.

He did not know what he thought of the whole 'Sekirei are aliens' thing. He knew that the odds of coincidental parallel evolution were so long as to be a practical impossibility. The odds of another intelligent species evolving near enough to Sol system to contact it and just happening to exist in the same blink of an eye that the entirety of human history was in the scale of time of the universe… Gregory was a science fiction fan but he was also a rationalist. He knew the odds were so long against such things that no one took them seriously, not if they really understood the factors involved.

Those things did not really matter until Madoka brought his sixteen-year-old daughter into the equation. Then he had to have more proof than just the word of his incredibly pretty, and incredibly frustrating, houseguest. She claimed the Sekirei had powers and abilities that were beyond what any human could claim. Throwing lightning, leaping 10 stories into the air, punching holes through reinforced concrete walls, see around corners, mindspeak others. When he asked her to show him these things, she mumbled that she was one of the only Sekirei who could not do anything like that except some of the far sight tricks.

Of course.

She had asked him if he had a pocketknife. He gave her the small, folding, knife he carried by habit and she used it to cut him across the back of the hand! Not deeply, just a shallow cut across the entire back of his left hand, enough to bleed all over the desk where she had held his hand down with a remarkably strong grip. Not a supernaturally strong grip, just strong for a five-foot-tall barely one-hundred-pound twenty-year old girl.

Before he could yank his hand back and yell about her being a crazy lunatic who cut people with pocketknives, she placed her other hand on the cut and a moment of warmth from her hand later and there was no cut anymore. Not a scab, not a scar, nothing.

Like it had never happened.

He had snatched the pocketknife away from her and sliced his hand himself, much deeper than she had. Grimacing at the sharp pain that was like a fiery brand across the back of his hand, he held it out to her. She did the same thing; put her hand over the injury and a moment of warmth later the cut was gone, completely healed.

Madoka met his gaze, her sky-blue eyes determined and focused, daring him to deny what had just happened.

That was when Gregory O'Donnell realized that he had, indeed, fallen very deeply down the rabbit hole.

There were still a hundred explanations that Occam's Razor insisted were more likely than parallel evolution of two species with no common ancestor and separated by light years of space. Perhaps she was a mutant, or a rare type of psychic, or perhaps the entire thing was staged and some sort of elaborate hoax involving controlled hallucinations.

However, he knew that cut across the back of his hand was real. Both of them. Moreover, he _knew_ that Madoka had healed it by putting her hand on it and willing it to be healed. He _knew_ that had really happened, no matter how much his rational side wanted to insist it could not have.

To his credit, Gregory O'Donnell did not once say, "That's impossible!"

He always _hated_ it when someone said that in the face of evidence to the contrary. It was just bad writing.

So he had to believe that what Madoka had said was true, to some degree. Whether or not the Sekirei were really aliens or if they were people who were kidnapped by MBI and experimented on and given mysterious super-human powers… like in a really clichéd super hero comic… it did not truly matter right now. What mattered right now was that Madoka was some sort of person with more than mundane human abilities; that was established fact. She definitely healed the cut on his hand, twice. He felt the pain of the injury and there was still blood left over afterwards, so he was as sure as he could be that it had actually happened. Madoka had mentioned that some of the Sekirei could "see around corners" and they all had varying degrees of ability to sense each other, some could project their thoughts to another Sekirei and be "heard". She called these abilities "farsense" but Gregory just made a note to follow up on the specifics later. For now, he would operate on the assumption that her story about Katsuragi being after her on behalf of the Ashikabi, Higa, were true, because it was safer to make that assumption right now than to do otherwise.

The story she told him about the Sekirei Plan… it really sounded like a piss poor plot for a piss poor manga. What possible reason would MBI, a hugely successful and wealthy company that had patented several revolutionary medical technologies, invest no-doubt-trillions of yen into some battle to the death… or 'termination' as Madoka insisted, as though there was an important difference between the two states… between the 100+ super-powered aliens they _already_ had complete control over? If they wanted all of the Sekirei dead, they could just kill them.

No, it made no sense at all the way Madoka explained it, which meant that likely there was a lot more going on than she knew. A lot more that would make this Sekirei Plan make sense, make it obvious where MBI and Hiroto Minaka were benefiting from it.

It seemed as though the Sekirei girls, and he confirmed that almost all of them were girls, were strongly under the impression they each would find an Ashikabi, and they would each eventually find each other in this city of 19 million people and they would fight until one was unconscious or yielded or was 'terminated'. Eventually there would be only one and that one and her Ashikabi would win some great prize.

However, if it were possible for an Ashikabi to 'wing' more than one Sekirei… that would make this a completely new ballgame.

Especially if none of the Sekirei and none of the administrators of the Sekirei Plan had counted on ruthless men forcibly winging _groups_ of Sekirei. Whatever controls MBI had in place that were calculated to be effective against one troublesome Ashikabi and his one troublesome Sekirei would fail completely in the face of one troublesome Ashikabi and his _dozen_ troublesome Sekirei.

That meant this Sekirei Plan could go balls up very quickly, resulting in attempts by MBI to regain control of a situation that was far more difficult than they had anticipated. This would mean overreaction and half-assed plans implemented by rushed, over-worked and under-qualified security staff.

 _That_ meant people were going to be in a great deal of danger. Regardless of Madoka's insistence that no Sekirei would ever attack an Ashikabi, Gregory knew that _the other Sekirei_ were not necessarily the biggest danger to the participants in the Sekirei Plan.

No. Gregory was very aware at how dangerous his own species was when spooked and put in high-pressure situations against things they did not understand.

Gregory was not worried about the other Sekirei nearly as much as he was worried about MBI. Of course, Gregory reminded himself firmly, he had not seen the other Sekirei in action yet so he might well be underestimating just how much a risk _they_ were.

He did not like trying to guess at risks when his daughter was in the equation. Not one damn bit. But Madoka insisted and begged, with tears in her beautiful blue eyes, begged him to take her to the apartment so she could try to bond with Mishi, to save Madoka from a lifetime of enslavement to a ruthless bastard. Any ruthless bastard. Gregory knew very well that whoever this Higa fellow was he sure as hell was not the only man in Shin Tokyo that would be more than willing to force a lifetime of enslavement onto a girl who looked like Madoka.

No, there was no shortage of ruthless bastards in this city. Shin Tokyo was the world _capital_ of ruthless bastards.

Gregory carefully steered the big, orange, Jeep through the early evening traffic. It was 6pm, a couple of hours later than his usual drive from the school to the apartment, so traffic was a bit denser than he was used to. Here on the western side of the sprawling metropolis vehicle traffic was not as bad as in the downtown area or as bad as it was in the east of the city. It was still dense enough that Gregory needed to pay attention to where he was driving.

Gregory glanced to the left, at the passenger side door-mirror before changing lanes. He looked past the pensive and silent Number 37, Madoka. It was odd to think of her as literally "sanjunana Madoka" even though that was the name he had been calling her for a week. The legal department at the MBI Sekirei Plan Division had a sense of humor at least. Moreover, whoever came up with the name "sekirei" for the girls… a sekirei was a small black and white bird also called a 'wagtail'. And, man oh man, Madoka sure could wag her tail, he granted that.

Sense of humor meant that maybe they were not as mad scientist insane as the whole thing seemed at first glance. At least it was a positive sign, in Gregory's book.

His thoughts were deliberately avoiding the issue of his daughter getting involved in this mess. He was on the knife's edge in his feelings about the whole thing. He truly wanted to help Madoka. If what she had described about forced winging were true and what that meant to her and her kind, to be enslaved in such a way… anyone with any decency at all would make great effort to help a Sekirei avoid such a fate.

But why did it have to be his sixteen-year-old daughter who had managed to spark some "reaction" in Madoka? Was he willing to let Mishi put herself at risk in this crazy Sekirei Plan that no-doubt had far deeper secrets to it than Gregory had even had a hint of so far? It would be like volunteering to take part in a real-life James Bond movie with shadowy organizations moving pieces on a game board against each other, collateral damage happening with innocent people being hurt, even killed.

There were many reasons to say no. But looking at Madoka's face, her eyes swimming in unshed tears, fear radiating from her, listening to her literally beg him to help her… there was no way he could do anything other than what he was doing.

Driving her to the apartment, to find Mishi. So Madoka could kiss his sixteen year old daughter and establish a psychic bond of love and affection between them which would unlock more powers in Madoka as well as mark Madoka as a full participant in this Sekirei Plan, a valid target for the other Sekirei who were going to be patrolling the city looking for easy 'kills'.

Gregory's fingers itched to find his notebook and make more notes on what he and Madoka had discussed. She was remarkably ignorant about the details of her own people, the Sekirei. How did their powers operate, where did the energy for their powers come from, what range of abilities were there… there were a thousand questions that immediately came to mind for Gregory and he was shocked that Madoka could not answer even the most basic. It seemed as though MBI had kept the Sekirei ignorant by design, focusing most of their efforts on convincing them to participate in the Sekirei Plan (and Gregory found out very quickly that even Madoka had complete conviction that the Sekirei Plan was a good and necessary thing, even as she bemoaned her own zero chance of winning).

Gregory wondered how deep the conditioning went into which MBI had put so much effort. While people, including Sekirei, he assumed, were naturally willing to compete against each other they were also naturally very prone to cooperation. That is the only reason humankind climbed out of the prehistoric darkness to accomplish the civilization which was the crowning achievement of life on Earth.

Convincing someone to kill _all_ of the other people like them in order to win an undefined prize would require quite a _lot_ of conditioning. Alternatively, very careful selection of the participants might work. But if MBI raised all 100+ Sekirei from the womb to adulthood then they could not have screened for the kind of personalities who would gladly sign up for mass slaughter.

There must have been a _lot_ of conditioning.

And he was voluntarily signing his sixteen year old daughter to get involved in it.

On the knife-edge. Help Madoka. Keep Mishi uninvolved and safe. Help Madoka.

Gregory kept driving, one eye on the dense traffic on the Omotesandō, the wide street that passed through the heart of western Shin Tokyo, and the other eye on the big LED monitor in the center of the dash showing the fastest route back to the apartment. He disagreed with the GPS that taking Omotesandō was a good plan. The street was famous worldwide, called "Tokyo's Champs-Élysées" without exaggeration. He usually drove well around the commercial district that made Shibuya Ward famous, but he had not been paying attention and followed his GPS's recommendations.

"Mado-chan, can you use your, ah, seeing-around-corners thing to find Katsuragi? You can see further than normal and through things, right?"

"Yes, but it is not easy." Madoka answered quietly. "I am trying to sense her but I have never tried doing this while moving and it seems that it is more difficult while we are driving, Gregory-san."

Well, so much for that idea. Gregory grimaced and asked, "Are you sure there has been no one else you had any reaction to at all? Is Mishi the only person in a week who you've met that might be an Ashikabi?"

Gregory heard the sigh from his passenger before she answered, her soft voice practically caressing his ears. "Mishi-chan is the best chance I have. Even with Mishi-chan it was just a small twinge, Gregory-san, a reaction so small I was not sure of what it meant at the time. And from what we were told there would be no mistaking a reaction with a strong Ashikabi. If someone had the potential, was kind, and showed they cared for a Sekirei it could spark a reaction as well, even if there was no reaction at first encounter. I suspect if the Sekirei wanted it badly and the potential Ashikabi wanted it badly even a marginal Ashikabi could manage to make the 'winging' happen."

Out of the corner of his eye Gregory saw Madoka shifting in the Jeep's bucket seat, tucking one leg under the other and turning to face him as she continued. "I am wondering how much of what we knew, how much of the rumors and old myths that were whispered among us in the dorms, how much is true and how much is just the wishful thinking of silly girls who were scared and alone. Understand, Gregory-san, that the subject of Ashikabi and winging was the single most gossiped about item in our lives. MBI certainly put a lot of emphasis on it as well, constantly reminding us that as soon as we were released into the city we had to find our Ashikabi. They went on about that almost as much as they went on about 'fight fight fight until only one remains'. I wonder about how much of all we were told is untrue, but I saw Katsuragi's winging with my own eyes. As horrible as it was I know at least the story about Ashikabi and Sekirei and winging is definitely very true."

Gregory nodded, concentrating on driving and on what Madoka had said. He had a sudden mad notion to reach over and open the passenger side door of his Jeep and push the beautiful blonde girl out into the street right in front of the Meiji Shrine and take off, praying to never hear about her or the Sekirei Plan or aliens ever again. The impulse was so strong and sudden that he could not breathe for a moment.

His left hand, resting on the stick shift to be ready to shift gears in this traffic, felt Madoka's hand cover it and squeeze gently. He glanced to the left towards her, where she was turned in the passenger seat so she was facing him, a full smile on her face, gratitude radiating from her. "Thank you Gregory-kun. For everything that you have done for me and are trying to do for me. If not for you, I would have been condemned to a horrible fate by now. You are the best man I have ever met and I want you to know I am very grateful for your kindness and your protection."

Just like that, the crazy idea of pushing Madoka out of the vehicle into traffic disappeared from his head. He could only smile back at her and answer, "Of course, Mado-chan. Anything I can do to help, I'll do."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 _ **Terminology**_

 **MBI Sekirei Labs** \- We'll use this phrase as our umbrella term to designate MBI's facilities for the study, housing, and care of the Sekirei. There may be multiple locations but unless it is important to specify which or where we will just call them all the MBI Sekirei Labs. Madoka reports there was no one specific term used for these facilities that she was aware of. Madoka and the other Sekirei she was raised with spent their entire lives in the MBI Sekirei Labs, not once being allowed to go away from the controlled facilities on their own. This blatant imprisonment is only the least of the laws, both Japanese and International, which MBI seems to have violated.

 **Sekirei** – The supposedly alien subjects of MBI's experimentation and MBI's 'Sekirei Plan'. At least some are confirmed by my own witnessing to have abilities beyond human. There were 108 of them when their ship crashed into the Pacific a thousand years ago (this all being reported by Madoka as 'common knowledge' among the Sekirei in the MBI Sekirei Labs). The 108 included one adult (Sekirei 01) and 107 Sekirei fetuses at various stages of development, transported in some sort of suspended animation womb tanks.  
They were discovered by Hiroto Minaka and his "minions" (a term used by Minaka himself according to Madoka) in late 1999 still in suspension aboard their long-crashed ship. Madoka does not know where this ship might be other than a vague memory of it being on a rocky island in the ocean. (Later Note: Kamakura Island in international waters near Japan)  
Madoka indicates there was some significant difference between the late-stage fetuses (numbers 02 through 09) and the rest of the Sekirei (numbers 10 through 108). What possible difference one pre-viability fetus can be to another pre-viability fetus is unknown but Madoka insists there was certainly a difference of some sort.

 **Ashikabi** – Madoka says the Sekirei require a psychic mating bond to an 'Ashikabi' in order to unlock all of their psychic potential (and possibly to unlock the ability to reproduce, must follow up on this later). She says the Ashikabi are indistinguishable from any other human, indicating that the trait for Ashikabi potential is not common to all humans. Must follow up on where this trait originated from, Madoka reported that myth or legend among the Sekirei hints Ashikabi-ness may be a result of ancient Sekirei genes still being passed down among the human population from earlier Sekirei arrivals on Earth. Can male Sekirei be Ashikabi? Can female Sekirei? Is it only humans who can be? Only humans with some ancient Sekirei genetics? If only Terran Humans with Sekirei ancestry can be Ashikabi then it follows that Sekirei themselves could be Ashikabi, unless the 108 specimens aboard the original ships were engineered to not have that ability themselves while still passing it on to their descendants. Obviously a great deal more research needs to be done on this subject.

 **Group 11** – The selection of Sekirei who shared common dormitory, classes, examiners, and 'adjusters' to which Madoka was assigned. Madoka reports that there were five Sekirei who were always a part of Group 11, but others came and went over the years. This manipulation of which Sekirei lived together, for how long, when they were separated from those they had grown bonds with, seems to be part of a long term, intensive, study by MBI on the socialization of the Sekirei, possibly to determine how best to manipulate them long term.  
From initial descriptions, it seems that interaction with other Groups never occurred and even the existence of other Groups is speculative. If someone were removed from Group 11, it meant they would never be seen again, in Madoka's experience.  
Note: get Madoka to list all the members of Group 11 in every detail she can recall, as well as those who were assigned to the Group and separated from it over the years.

* * *

 _ **Sekirei**_

What Sekirei I have information about I will note here, along with the source of that information, rumor or hearsay noted where applicable.

 **37 Sanjunana Madoka** – Madoka has the ability to heal injuries by touching the wound and concentrating on a desire for the wound to be healed. I witnessed a demonstration of this ability with my own eyes and the demonstration was carried out upon my own body, both injury caused by Madoka herself for purposes of proving her abilities and a second injury caused by myself to prove there was no trick with the injury itself.  
She asserts that she can see also "around corners", which sounds a lot like a form of clairvoyance. The same faculty allows some to communicate wordlessly, mind-to-mind, as well as sense other Sekirei and their relative strength.  
She claims most of the other Sekirei are super-humanly strong and tough and that she is one of the few that lack those abilities.  
She was the fifth Sekirei released into Shin Tokyo as part of Phase One of the Sekirei Plan, on Friday, Dec 6, 2019.

 **16 Toyotama** – Madoka described Toyotama as a powerful fighter, a "power type" who had great skill with a fighting staff/javelin that she carries on clips on her back when it is not needed. Madoka says she does not know if the lower number Sekirei are automatically more powerful than higher number Sekirei (other than the single digits who are definitely more powerful, must look into this later). The impression amongst the members of Group 11 was that the 'teen' numbered Sekirei were certainly a cut above everyone except for the single digits. Madoka indicated she knew Toyotama for years in Group 11 but we did not get into their history (must return to this when more time is available). Toyotama is bound to the Ashikabi Higa Izumi.

 **18 Ichiya** – Another power type, according to Madoka, who was raised in Group 11. Ichiya eventually specialized in savate, or French kickboxing, as her combat style of choice. Madoka claims only 16 Toyotama and 14 Chiyo ever defeated Ichiya in spars among the Group 11 Sekirei.

 **22 Kochou** – Bound to Ashikabi Kakizaki some date prior to Monday Dec. 9 2019. Kochou is supposedly one of the uncommon Sekirei with non-physical powers, like Madoka herself. Kouchou's abilities appear to have something to do with her intelligence and the ability to organize data, but Madoka knew little for sure about it, only rumor and what she overheard among the MBI staff and, most importantly, what she heard from Ashikabi Higa and Ashikabi Kakizaki on 9 Dec 2019.

Madoka believes, from what she overheard between Ashikabi Higa and Ashikabi Kakizaki, that Kochou is somehow able to get inside information about the release schedule of the Sekirei, allowing Ashikabi Higa and his people to set ambushes for the unprepared and unaware Sekirei. If true this makes Kochou a _significant_ asset to Higa's operation and a real game changer, one which MBI very well may not have taken into account in their planning, especially in planning their control elements, those aspects of their operation meant to enforce compliance with the Sekirei Plan itself.

Madoka has little firsthand knowledge of Kochou, though she was one of the Sekirei witnesses to an emergency which occurred within the last year of their confinement at the MBI Sekirei Labs that involved Kochou and her twin sister Akitsu. Her description of the event is added below.

Madoka: _The staff was separating the two to be assigned different dorm groups for the first time in their lives. This was well after we had all been through our Puberty Adjustments, I will guess it was perhaps just a year ago. Akitsu, who was back then known as number 07, went crazy and lost control of her powers (_ Gregory notes: something to do with being able to reduce thermal energy in an area, coupled with the ability to force condensation of atmospheric water. So in other words she can make ice out of thin air, unbelievably _), resulting in the death of staff as well as destruction of property. All the Sekirei witnesses were quickly moved away from the scene. I do not know what happened after, other than the long term consequences of this event directly led to Akitsu to becoming a "scrapped number" (_ Gregory notes: must follow up on what this "scrapped number" bit means, later _)._

 **86 Katsuragi** – Madoka could only say that Katsuragi was likely a "power type" from what she recalled from the few months that Katsuragi shared the same dorm space as Madoka's 'Group 11' several years ago. Madoka's description of the events of Katsuragi's winging to Ashikabi Higa indicated that number 16 Toyotama had little difficulty physically beating Katsuragi. Madoka stressed this meant little when it came to Katsuragi's danger to other Sekirei or to mere humans. Madoka remembers Katsuragi as being mild mannered and quiet, a girl who kept to herself mostly, but who was kindhearted and friendly. Unfortunately Madoka also remembers 16 Toyotama as being brave and kind and a protector of the weak, so what value her recollection of what Katsuragi's nature might be is questionable.

 ** _Ashikabi_**

 **Higa** – Higa Izumi, young heir to the Higa Pharmaceutical empire. Izumi has access to a great deal of financial resources as the CEO and President of Higa Pharmaceuticals, also, perhaps only coincidentally, a primary rival of MBI in the medical technology field.  
Madoka reports she could sense he was a powerful and dangerous man, though the worth of this 'sense' has yet to be determined. He bound Sekirei 16 Toyotama to him on some date prior to Monday Dec. 9 2019. He bound Sekirei 86 Katsuragi to him on that date, sometime in the afternoon, downtown Shin Toyko. He may be the first Ashikabi to discover both a) it is possible to 'wing' more than one Sekirei _and_ b) it is possible to do so by force, against the will of the unwinged Sekirei. He seems to have some superior relationship to the Ashikabi Kakizaki. He also seems to have some personal dislike or contempt for the Sekirei themselves. Typical elite social class Japanese racism or something else?

 **Kakizaki** – Not sure if first or last name. Seems to have an inferior relationship to Ashikabi Higa due to obsequious behavior witnessed by Madoka Monday Dec 9 2019, downtown Shin Toyko. From his own statements and the statements of Ashikabi Higa, Kakizaki has bound Sekirei 22 Kochou at some date prior to Monday Dec 9 2019.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

Started Sep 27 2014  
Completed Sep 28 2014  
Originally Posted May 7 2015


	4. Bk1 - Ch4 A Fate Denied

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 1.4 – Ch 4 A Fate Denied

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

 _(Author's Note: Please do remember that in Japan one drives on the left hand side of the road,much like in the U.K., so everything involving vehicles and roads is the opposite from in the U.S. That means you do look to the left from the drivers seat to look at the person in the passenger seat.)_

Thursday, December 19th, 2019

Sekirei number 86, Katsuragi, was never as enthusiastic about the Sekirei Plan as her sister Sekirei seemed to be. In truth, Katsuragi was not enthusiastic about much of _anything_ ; she liked her days to be quiet and peaceful, maybe reading a book or watching a Bruce Lee movie, alone.

However, that was before she was released into Shin Tokyo as one of the first Sekirei sent out to find their Ashikabi in Stage One of the Sekirei Plan.

She had the administrators make her a tight fitting yellow-and-black jumpsuit to wear, like her idol wore in the movie "Game of Death". Katsuragi was a full contact fist fighter, a 'power type' as they called themselves, and she loved watching Bruce Lee movies.

"Game of Death" was her favorite.

Since her winging to her Ashikabi, Higa Izumi, Katsuragi could not work up much enthusiasm about anything. Every day since her winging had been the same; take orders from number 16 or from Higa's assistant, Kakizaki, about where to search for unwinged Sekirei to capture them for her Ashikabi. Return late at night having failed to find any Sekirei, endure the humiliating punishments handed out by Kakizaki for failure, with number 16 disinterestedly watching.

Toyotama was there to make sure Katsuragi took her punishments without fighting back or resisting. She was not even allowed to cover her nakedness. Number 16 told Katsuragi, in a rare moment of collegial talk between the two, that she was grateful to Katsuragi because Kakizaki found Toyotama's larger, muscular, body "unsightly" and that Katsuragi provided the sadistic secretary a preferable target for his… enthusiasms.

This gratitude did not provide any relief from the situation nor did it make Katsuragi feel particularly better, in spite of Toyotama's intentions. Almost every night number 86 was to stand, naked and spread-eagle, against one of the walls in one of the special, private, secure, and (most importantly) sound-proofed, rooms in the residential penthouse level of the Higa Pharmaceuticals headquarters building. Ordered to take whatever Kakizaki's perverse and sadistic mind determined was suitable punishment for her failures.

Katsuragi shuddered to think of what life was like for the one Sekirei that Kakizaki had winged, himself. Silver-haired, pretty, and enviously buxom, number 22 Kochou was one of the rare "brain types" and she was the reason Kakizaki was able to occasionally acquire inside information on where new Sekirei would be released. Information Higa intended to use to swell the ranks of his Sekirei slaves.

Kochou rarely said anything to anyone.

Kochou never met anyone's eyes.

Number 86 Katsuragi was under orders to spend her days hunting through Shin Tokyo to find unwinged Sekirei and then beat them down so she could return them, bound and helpless, to the east of the city, for her Master to wing.

That was the entirety of Katsuragi's world now. Her orders.

Today was different though. Today she had _finally_ caught sight of an unwinged Sekirei! She had seen a blonde Sekirei who she thought might have been number 62, Kaie, or maybe number 39, Mitsuki, both of whom Katsuragi had known from time shared in Group 4 in the MBI Sekirei Labs dorms after her own Puberty Adjustments. The unwinged Sekirei had been wearing casual western-style clothes instead of the more elaborate outfits favored by most of the Sekirei so it was difficult to be sure who she was and she had disappeared into the traffic that swarmed the streets of the city after just a second of eye contact. Number 86 was sure though that she was close to an unwinged Sekirei, close to being able to fulfill her orders. And Katsuragi _really_ wanted to fulfill her orders.

If the Sekirei she was able to retrieve for her Ashikabi happened to be blonde and more petite than Katsuragi and therefore more attractive to Kakizaki's attentions then so much the better.

However, her target had disappeared. Now Katsuragi was searching the sidewalks, the alleys, and the rooftops, with only occasional glances spared for the vehicles that drove by her. No matter how much she strained her eyes and her meager Farsight faculty she still had not found her target. It had been more than two hours since she had met that Sekirei's eyes across the busy street but Katsuragi could feel that she was close. She wished she were better at seeing around corners, like some of the other girls in the MBI Sekirei Labs. Farsight was never one of her strong suits, mainly because it was almost entirely ignored by the researchers in the MBI Labs in favor of the more obviously combat-oriented abilities. Combat abilities that Katsuragi was able to demonstrate skill with, so that is what Katsuragi focused on as she grew up.

Still, she never considered giving up the hunt. No, she would continue searching until she found the unwinged Sekirei or until midnight came, when she was supposed to return to Headquarters, in the east of Shin Tokyo.

Return to Headquarters, another failure. To stand, naked and unbound, ordered by Higa-sama to allow Kakizaki do whatever he wanted to her. Number 86 found that the worst part; if they would tie her up when they beat her, or when they violated her body in shameful ways, then she might find _some_ solace in the fact that she was _forced_ , tied up, had no way to resist. Instead, no such fig leaf for her pride was allowed; she was ordered to stand against the wall, hands above her head gripping two rings that were inset in the masonry and do nothing but accept what Kakizaki did. So that is what she did, unobjecting.

There had been two nights where instead of ordering her against the wall, Kakizaki made her kneel before him. Those had been the worst.

So far.

Number 86 _very much_ wanted to find an unwinged Sekirei to deliver to her Master.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

" _Hi, I'm Yosuga and this is my best friend, Madoka. What's your name?" the black haired girl with the almond-shaped dark eyes smiled at the new arrival in the Group 11's dorms. Her shy blonde friend Madoka stood behind her, curious about the new girl too but not brave enough to introduce herself._

 _That was one of the reasons Madoka loved her best friend Yosuga; because Yosuga was brave so Madoka did not have to be._

 _The newcomer to Group 11, a skinny, pale, girl with light blue eyes and dirty blonde hair, answered in a soft mumble, "I am Katsuragi, number 86."_

" _Oh! Yeah, I'm number 44 and Madoka is number 37. I keep forgetting to say that part, I'm sorry!"_

 _All three girls looked to be about eight years old though none of them could have said if they were six or eight or ten. They had not been taught about calendars and seasons and years yet because knowing such things was not necessary for the Sekirei aliens, in the view of the MBI Administrators._

 _Katsuragi nodded her understanding to Yosuga, "I used to forget too, but in my last Group we started getting in bad trouble if we forgot so I started remembering."_

 _Madoka and Yosuga both made sympathetic noises. They knew about getting in trouble with the MBI Administrators. Those people had no sense of humor at all and they were all getting harder and harder to please, too!_

" _Well come on 86 Katsuragi! Me and Mado-chan will introduce you to the others! Hey, do you like movies? You want to pick out the movie for tonight, since it's your first night with us?"_

 _Katsuragi nodded her head and excitedly answered, speaking louder than a mumble for the first time since she arrived, "Can we watch a Bruce Lee movie? Those are my favorites!"_

 _As Yosuga dragged Katsuragi and Madoka both along into the common room, she answered, "I guess so. I don't think I've seen a Bruce Lee movie. Is it good?"_

" _Bruce Lee is the best fighter ever. You'll love it, I promise."_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka, Sekirei number 37, sat in the passenger seat of the big, orange, Jeep. On her way, she hoped, to the apartment she had been staying at for the last week, given shelter and food by Gregory O'Donnell and his family.

She also hoped that Mishi O'Donnell, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the man driving the Jeep, would be home. Madoka rather desperately needed to find the American girl and kiss her.

Mishi's father, Gregory, was unsure if he wanted to let Madoka bond with his daughter and involve her in the dangerous Sekirei Plan that MBI was inflicting on not only the Sekirei and their Ashikabi but also everyone in Shin Tokyo. Madoka knew Gregory was undecided; she understood he wanted to help Madoka but his protective instincts towards his daughter had the potential to _destroy_ Madoka's life.

She could not let that happen. If Gregory stopped the vehicle and told her to get out, now, then number 86, who was hunting for Madoka, would find her and drag her back to her master Higa. _Anything_ was better than that happening.

Being bonded to a man like Higa was the worst possible fate Madoka could imagine.

Madoka reached her right hand out and gripped Gregory O'Donnell's hand where it rested on the stick shift. Gregory glanced over at her, surprised. Surprised, since in a week of living with him and his family Madoka had not once initiated a touch with the man.

She held his hand now and smiled her very best smile, putting as much gratitude and affection as she could into her words. "Thank you Gregory-kun. For everything that you have done for me and are trying to do for me. If not for you, I would have been condemned to a horrible fate by now. You are the best man I have ever met and I want you to know I am very grateful for your kindness and your protection."

Madoka could see the commitment to helping her solidify in Gregory's expression, the concern he had for his daughter's safety taking a temporary back seat to his desire to be the kind of man Madoka felt gratitude towards. Madoka envied Mishi; her American friend had a father who cared about her and wanted to protect her so much that it took every trick Madoka knew to keep him on the path of helping Madoka remain free from the nightmare that Higa represented.

"Of course, Mado-chan. Anything I can do to help, I'll do." Gregory's return smile made her feel safer. Gregory would help her, he was a good man and he cared about what happened to her and cared about the other Sekirei too. She could count on him. His honest desire to help her, proven without room for doubt, declared by his words that were spoken in his comforting deep voice, caused warmth to fill Madoka's heart and spread out through her body, a glow she could almost see wrapped about her hand where it clasped Gregory's.

The Jeep was idling at a red light, surrounded by other vehicles. The height of the big American vehicle insured Madoka could see over the rooftops of the cars around them, allowing Madoka to scan the crowds on the sidewalks on either side of the busy street when she wasn't focusing on using her Farsight to sense further than her eyes could manage.

"If you see her, let me know, Mado-chan. We'll try to outrun her, lose her in the traffic and the backstreets. I know this part of the city pretty well and I doubt she does."

Madoka nodded. "I will. If I see her, I will let you know right away." Madoka had not used her Farsight much since that downtown alley where Katsuragi had been winged by Higa, but she tried to engage that sense now, hoping she could use it to see in every direction at once or pick out one person from the crowds along this busy street.

She kept scanning the crowds on the sidewalks on the passenger side of the street but there must have been thousands of people walking along the side of the street! Why weren't these people at home having dinner with their families? She could see them with her eyes and with her Farsight, thousands of people along the street, going into and coming out of stores with names like Gucci and Prada and Dior. It was driving Madoka to distraction, trying to spot one dishwater blonde girl in a crowd of hundreds and hundreds of Japanese.

Still, even though she saw no sign of Katsuragi with any of her senses, Madoka knew the girl was close. She could feel it.

The light ahead turned green and the Jeep moved forward, Gregory shifting the gears into second, which meant Madoka needed to let go of his hand. She did so and turned to her left to look more fully out the passenger side window, rather sharply missing the comfort of the physical contact. She was scared, though she was doing her best to keep it hidden.

As the Jeep picked up speed alongside the other vehicles traveling on this broad, six-lane, avenue through the commercial district around Tokyo Metro High, Gregory caught Madoka's attention. "I'm going to assume that Katsuragi is a blonde girl who is thin and rangy, dressed in a skin tight yellow and black body-stocking like Uma Thurman in 'Kill Bill'."

Madoka's head whipped around to face Gregory, "Yes! Why, do you see her? Where?"

Gregory pointed with the index finger of the hand gripping the top of the steering wheel, pointing directly ahead of the Jeep. "I figure that's her right there, Mado-chan."

Sure enough, standing in middle of the broad street, on the dashed lines that marked the separation between the eastbound traffic and the westbound traffic, was number 86, Katsuragi. She was watching the sidewalks on both sides of the street, her head pivoting back and forth, trying to see everyone and everything at once.

Gregory and Madoka were driving in the furthest right hand lane of the three lanes going in their direction, which meant that barely two seconds after Gregory pointed at Katsuragi, the big orange Jeep drove past her. They passed almost close enough for Gregory to reach out of the driver side window and touch the yellow-and-black clad Sekirei.

Katsuragi met Madoka's eyes as the Jeep drove past, with Madoka unable to do anything but stare in horrified, open-mouthed, astonishment. _She found me… she found me… oh no!_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

"OH NO! She saw me, Gregory-kun, she sees us! Go! Go faster!" Madoka was yelling in Gregory's ear, the girl turned in her seat completely to stare out the back windows of the Jeep. "Go! She is running after us! She is catching up!"

"What? There's no damn way she's catching up; we're going 60 kph, Madoka."

Madoka was slapping Gregory's shoulder now and screaming, "I am telling you Gregory, she is catching us! Go faster!"

Gregory glanced into the driver's side mirror and sure enough, beyond all realistic expectations, he could clearly see the yellow and black clad Katsuragi running in the middle of the avenue behind them and sure as hell, it looked like she was catching up.

Frustrated yelling in English filled the cab of the Jeep. "You've got to be fucking kidding me. Okay, hold on, damnit, Madoka, sit down and buckle your seat belt!" Without waiting for Madoka to do as he ordered, Gregory whipped the Jeep to the right, turning onto a north-south avenue across three lanes of oncoming traffic. Oncoming traffic which screeched to a halt with horns honking and tires screeching. On the new street, Gregory floored the gas pedal after downshifting fiercely.

"Madoka, sit and buckle your seat belt!" Gregory yelled, still in English.

"I do not know how to buckle a belt thing!" Madoka screamed back at him in the same language.

Gregory could see out of the corner of his eye that Madoka was indeed fumbling with the seat belt as though she could not remember how to use it. "For fuck's sake…" he muttered, watching the traffic ahead to make sure he was clear for the next few moments, and then he reached over with his left hand, grabbed the seat belt buckle, and slammed it home into the receptacle, latching it firmly. Unfortunately, the buckle and receptacle pinched the webbing between his thumb and forefinger badly and his hand started bleeding all over the steering wheel.

"Ah, damnit! Fuck that hurts! Fuck. FUCK!"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka was shocked into silence by Gregory's loud cursing. She had never heard anyone curse like that in her whole life and certainly never expected it from the kind, articulate, Gregory O'Donnell. He was a schoolteacher! He taught English! He could not talk like that! It wasn't, wasn't, it just wasn't appropriate!

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory, unaware of how profoundly shocked his passenger was, tried to ignore the pain in his hand and focus on driving as fast as he could get away with. In truth, he felt quite a bit better, his head clearer and his heart rate calmer, after the uncharacteristic outburst in English. He thought he saw a yellow blur of something in the rear view mirror, but he did not dare pull his attention from the traffic ahead of him to see for sure.

"Madoka. Madoka! Do you see her behind us?" Gregory asked, his voice still loud in the confines of the Jeep.

The question snapped Madoka out of her momentary shock and she swiveled her head around to look behind the Jeep. "No, I do not see her. No, wait, yes, she is back there, I just saw her jump! She can probably jump five to ten stories up, Gregory-san, so she is going up on top of the buildings to follow us from there! And stop yelling at me in English! I do not like it!"

Gregory grumbled as he drove through and around the evening commuter traffic in such a way that he was bound to receive a dozen tickets from automatic red light and speed limit monitors, "Great, just great, she can jump ten stories up? Wonderful! It's a good thing we're in a vehicle with a giant canvas top, huh? That way she can spot us from halfway across the city if she's on top a building."

The pair spent the next few minutes in silence. Madoka was sitting in the passenger seat with her eyes tightly closed, a look of intense concentration on her face, and Gregory was watching traffic, as they put as much distance between themselves and where they had last seen Katsuragi as possible. Then Madoka yelled, "She jumped to that right hand street by accident, go left! Go, go!"

Gregory turned left without any signal and barely missed plowing the Jeep into a family of four who were crossing the intersection on foot, blithely obeying the Walk sign. The father of the family saved his youngest child's life by pulling her back by her hand so hard that the child completely left her feet.

Gregory immediately turned into a side street to the right, and then a half-block further turned into the small parking lot for a grocery store. He killed the engine and the headlights of the Jeep, remembering at the last moment to get his foot off the brake too. He sat with one hand on the steering wheel, the other gripping the gearshift knob, his eyes wide; the image of that small girl being yanked out of the way of the Jeep's big tires with only inches to spare was imprinted on his mind forever.

The silence in the Jeep was deafening. After a moment Madoka whispered, "Did we lose her?"

Gregory shrugged, looking out the windows and through the mirrors, answering in quiet Japanese, "I don't know, Mado-chan, but after I turned it was too late to do anything but stop. See? The street we were on is closed and there is no way out of this strip of street without turning completely around. Our best hope is that she just goes past us without realizing we stopped."

Madoka nodded agreement, keeping quiet. Her heart was beating so hard it felt it would burst out of her chest, her right hand was gripping Gregory's left hand so hard that the knuckles were white, the blood from his pinched-through-skin slicking her own hand but she did not pay it any attention. "Gregory-san, please, do not let her get me. Please. Promise me, you will not let her get me."

"I won't let her get you, Mado-chan. I promise. But we can't drive like that; I almost killed that little girl."

Madoka nodded, though she had not seen what Gregory was talking about. She eventually spoke, in almost a whisper, still gripping Gregory's bloody left hand, not looking at him but instead watching out the window of the Jeep for any sign of Katsuragi. "There was one other person I reacted to, a little bit, Gregory-san. After a week of being cared for and provided for, shelter and food and clothes and concern, I could feel the same reaction with you that I felt with Mishi-chan."

Gregory turned in the driver's seat to stare at the back of Madoka's head as she remained looking away from him. He could only gape, blinking in confusion while mentally reviewing what Madoka had just said.

"Say again?"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

" _Mado-chan, is Yosuga here?" Katsuragi quietly asked, the young girl hovering at the door of the room Madoka and Yosuga shared in the Group 11 dormitories._

 _Madoka, small and scared, sitting on her bed with her knees pulled up against her chest and her arms wrapped around them tightly, shook her head negatively._

 _Katsuragi shuffled her feet for a moment, unsure what to say. She liked Yosu and Mado but talking to Mado was always difficult. Yosuga was the social one among the smaller Group 11 girls, she could tell everyone what everyone else wanted to say without getting nervous at all. In the three months that Katsuragi had been with Group 11 she had grown to like Yosuga and Madoka best of all of the other girls. They were both Katsuragi's size, unlike some of the other girls who were tall and had been adjusted older already. And like the other small girls, Katsuragi lived in fear of being taken away and coming back changed. Or never coming back at all, which sometimes happened to the Sekirei._

 _The last one in Group 11 who was taken away and never returned was little 52 Akio. Katsuragi was sad when 52 Akio never returned from his adjustments; he was the only boy Sekirei she had ever known, other than that scary 05 Mutsu but he did not count because he was not a boy, he was a huge and scary grown-up. 52 Akio was the only boy Sekirei any of the girls in Group 11 had ever known and he was quiet and very kind to all of the girls in Group 11, even a shy newcomer like Katsuragi. The taller grown-up girls had hoped he would come back from his adjustments more grown-up too but instead 52 Akio joined list of the Sekirei who had gone away and never came back._

 _Katsuragi moved over to stand next to the tiny blonde girl who was her friend. "Did they take Yosu away, Mado-chan?"_

 _Madoka nodded her head._

 _Katsuragi saw the girl's tears and understood. Madoka and Yosuga had been together always so of course Madoka was scared her friend would never come back. "Mado I'm sure she'll come back, they took 16 Toyotama and 18 Ichiya last week for adjustments and they came back. Even though I barely recognized them, they were so big afterwards! Bigger than 14 Chiyo and her friends even!"_

 _She could see this was not really helping Madoka so she tried again. "Hey, Mado-chan, tell me about what your Ashikabi will be like and I'll tell you about mine, okay?"_

 _This was Katsuragi's last gambit; the Ashikabi game always pulled Madoka out of her moods. If it did not work then nothing would._

 _Katsuragi sat down next to Madoka on the narrow bed when she heard the other blonde girl answer softly "Okay."_

" _Great! Okay, I'll go first, Mado-chan. My Ashikabi will be really rich, and he'll be really really handsome, a real bishounen! He'll have pretty hair like mine and have servants that call him sama…"_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory noticed he could see the reflection of Madoka's face in the passenger side window well enough to see that there were tears spilling down her cheeks and that her left hand was covering her mouth. She replied after just a moment, her voice remarkably composed for someone who was literally weeping.

"Just what you heard me say, Gregory-san. You could be my Ashikabi. I could feel some small reaction to you, tonight. It is not surprising, is it? Mishi got the potential from someone, it must have been from you, right? And even before tonight, you have been taking care of me. And tonight you have gone above and beyond the call of duty, beyond decent honorable help for a stranger in need."

Gregory protested, "But Mado-chan, I am about as far from the kind of person you deserve for your, ah, Ashikabi as you can get! And I'm married! And even if I weren't married you can't tie yourself for life to a guy so much older than you; you deserve someone better than me! And, and… I just can't be kissing pretty girls, alien or not!"

At the mention of kissing, Gregory saw Madoka's shoulders hunch up defensively. Gregory looked away, understanding. No 18-year-old girl wants to kiss a 40-year-old guy. He told himself this regularly, fooling himself on that subject was a well-known, familiar, trap, which Gregory was really quite adept at avoiding. He could see Madoka was still crying, silently, hand covering her mouth, her blue eyes gleaming in the reflection from all the tears.

"I… I really _do_ understand, Mado-chan. I wouldn't want to kiss an old, creepy, gross, guy either."

Madoka's eyes shifted to meet his in the reflection, growing wide. She started to speak but Gregory cut her off brusquely but trying, desperately, to insert some understanding kindness into his voice, with mixed results. "No, Mado-chan, don't. Don't. It is okay, it really is. And, you know, maybe we lost her! So you can try kissing Mishi and…"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka stared at the passenger side window, not really seeing _through_ it because she was looking at the reflection in it, the reflection of the face of the man seated in the driver seat of the Jeep. She could make out his features easily: the thinning blond hair, the creases around his mouth that went up around either side of his nostrils, the crow's feet at the corner of his eyes. She could just make out the sagging skin under his jawline and the grey hairs mixed with the darker blond hairs at above his somewhat large ears. Even through her tears she could somehow see Gregory O'Donnell's face clearly. Madoka's shoulders shook with a sob, which she tried to choke off.

Then Madoka "saw", with her Farsight, number 86 walking across the side street and into the parking lot of the small grocery, behind the Jeep. She knew there was no way, now, that Katsuragi would fail to find her.

"No! Oh god oh god oh god…"

Madoka turned and wrestled the seat belt out of its latch, alarming Gregory. She turned in her seat and threw herself at the shocked and all-but-paralyzed Gregory O'Donnell, pressing her tear-slicked lips against his desperately.

…

…

…

After a moment, she pulled back and looked into Gregory's green eyes, which were still wide with shock.

"Oh no! It did not work! No!" she wailed in anguish.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory looked at the weeping girl in his lap, irrelevantly noticing that he was right when he guessed that she was indeed one of the extremely rare women who could weep and still look amazingly beautiful.

" _Figures. Seriously, Exhibit One in the case for Madoka's alien-ness: unlikely perfection."_

Then he saw, over Madoka's shoulder and through the passenger side window, Katsuragi turn and look towards the Jeep. Gregory understood now what had caused the Sekirei to kiss him out of the blue. Now, no doubt, Katsuragi had heard Madoka's wailing and would be upon them quickly.

Refocusing on the panicking girl in his lap, Gregory gripped both of her upper arms in his hands, shook her sharply, and spoke gently, letting his voice rumble a bit in his chest as he spoke, "Madoka-chan."

She met his eyes and stuttered out, "Y-y-yes, Gregory-san?"

Gregory ignored the sight over Madoka's shoulder of Katsuragi walking across the parking lot towards them, her head turning left and right, searching. Instead, he focused his entire being on Madoka's face. Not that this was a difficult chore; it _was_ an amazing face. "Madoka-chan. You said this was a psychic bond; I think it's going to take more than just pushing your lips against mine. So take a deep breath, close your eyes, and focus on _wanting_ it to happen, focus on, on, reaching out to me, with all of your attention and focus, okay?"

His confident, rumbling, baritone was getting through to the girl at least. He was glad of that, it usually worked to calm his daughter when she went into a panic over something. _No, no, don't think about daughters, think about pretty blonde girls in your lap, idiot!_

Madoka's breathing steadied, she nodded hesitantly, her eyes slowly closed, and her lips even parted a bit in anticipation. But it was pretty obvious that whatever needed to happen next was going to be up to Gregory.

Gregory hoped the rambling speculations from Madoka earlier on the subject of Ashikabi and Sekirei winging were on the right track; that part of the equation was desire. Not just desire to have a Sekirei or have an Ashikabi in general, but desire for _that_ person.

And not just desire to have that person as their platonic lifetime long friend. But a need and a lust and hunger to _have_ every part of the other person, a desire to have them possess you and for you to possess them, all of that could be a factor in whether or not the bond was made.

How willing a participant was to "leave it all on the field", showing the other person how much they wanted, desired, needed, lusted for, the other. How willing were they to open themselves up to the possibility of rejection?

Gregory knew that sort of thing was not likely if Madoka were kissing his sixteen-year-old daughter. _He_ couldn't kiss like that when _he_ was sixteen, or when he was twenty. He would have been too scared of revealing too much about himself, of rejection, too reserved, trying to be too cool.

But there was a lifetime of difference between who he was right here, right now, and who some hypothetical twenty-year-old maybe-Ashikabi was.

And he knew that there was probably less than no chance at all that Madoka wanted him in any way that was going to help make this happen, not really, other than in the sense that anything at all was better than being taken by Higa's Sekirei. So, it was up to Gregory to be the person who laid open his heart, up to Gregory to make this happen if it could happen at all.

Really, it would even be easy; to put everything he had into having a first-kiss with a beautiful girl? A first-kiss with someone, a thing which had its own magic, which Gregory had been fortunate enough to know many times when he was younger and dating in High School and College, but was nothing he expected to ever have happen to him again.

Gregory was almost certain that if an Ashikabi was a Sekirei's mate for life that there was more to the psychic bonding ritual than just swapping _spit_.

 _Spit_ is not magical. _Spit_ does not have anything to do with who you are or what you want. Even with what Madoka had witnessed with Higa and Katsuragi, their Sekirei\Ashikabi connection, their bond, there had to have more at play than just _spit_. No doubt, whatever that connection was between Higa and Katsuragi was far under the surface, hard to see or understand, but there _had_ to be something there, more going on than _spit_.

All of this went through Gregory's head in a flash while he paid close attention to just exactly how good Madoka's curvy, compact, body felt pressed against his chest, in his lap, in spite of the awkwardness of the seats of the Jeep. And she _did_ feel _so_ very good against him.

Gregory thought to himself _, "One chance, Mado. We only have one chance to make this work. Come on, we can do this."_

Gregory released her arms and placed both of his hands on either side of her face, paused for only a split second to look at her full, pink, lips, then kissed the beautiful girl in his lap for all he was worth.

…

…

…

… _there!_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Katsuragi saw the blast of sunshine-yellow psychic power shaped like wings that filled the interior of the orange vehicle several rows away. She stopped in her tracks and cursed in frustration.

"Grrrrrrrraahhhhh! Damnit!"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

" _Ragi-tan, my Ashikabi will be handsome too, but he'll be tall and dark, and mysterious. And he will have tattoos and wear a leather jacket! He will be so cool all the other Sekirei will be jealous of how great my Ashikabi is."_

 _Katsuragi smiled and watched Madoka's face eagerly describe the traits of her someday Ashikabi, a list Katsuragi had heard many times since joining Group 11. Then, past her blonde friend, she spotted someone walking towards the dorm room, easily seen through the clear, floor-to-ceiling, glass walls that made up all the dorms for the girls. "Look, Mado-chan! There's Yosuga-chan! She's back from her adjustment. Oh, look how tall she is now!"_

 _Madoka stopped speaking and turned so quickly her blonde hair fanned out around her before settling on her shoulders. The little blonde Sekirei whimpered at the sight of her best friend and hugged her knees against her chest again, shaking her head and mumbling, "Oh no, no, no, they changed Yosu-tan, no, no…"_

 _Katsuragi squeezed Madoka's shoulder in an effort to be comforting. It was a little shocking to see Yosuga the way she was now; tall, slender, the skin-tight stretch-shorts and half-tank-top the Administrators provided showing off lean, muscular limbs. Not bulky like 14 Chiyo and 16 Toyotama and 18 Ichiya, and not hard muscles like 10 Uzume liked to show off, either. Instead Yosuga had sleek, slim, legs and arms. You could see the muscles flex under her golden skin. And, of course, Yosuga now showed the curve of hip and breasts of a post-pubescent Sekirei, though her breasts were much smaller than any of the other Sekirei in Group 11 who had been through their Puberty Adjustment._

 _All told, Katsuragi thought their dark haired friend looked like a hunter, like one of those big black cats in the nature programs on the television._

 _Katsuragi ran over to the open doorway of the dorm room that Yosuga and Madoka shared and waved at the now-tall Yosuga. The black-haired Sekirei seemed to be having trouble walking, holding her forehead in one trembling hand and leaning against the glass walls of the dorm hall._

" _Yosu-chan? Are you okay?" Katsuragi approached the now-much-taller 44 Yosuga, concerned for her friend's obvious pain and distress._

 _Yosuga's dark eyes found the now-much-shorter slender form of 86 Katsuragi, then Yosuga made an effort to smile before she answered, "Hello, Ragi-chan. I've got the worst headache. They said it would go away but so far it's so bad I can barely see. Can you help me to my bunk? Where is Mado-chan? Is she okay?"_

 _Madoka ran past Katsuragi and threw her arms around Yosuga's bare legs, still crying. "Yes, I am here Yosu-tan! I am so happy to see you, I was so scared you would go away and never return!"_

 _Katsuragi took Yosuga's hand, which had been steadying the taller girl against the wall, "This way, Yosu-chan, let's lay you down on your bunk and you should sleep. Maybe you will feel better after a nap."_

 _Madoka took Yosuga's other hand and nodded silently, face streaked with tears as she looked up at the familiar yet now different features of her best friend._

 _Before the mismatched trio of girls could travel the few meters to the dorm doorway, the hall speaker above them beeped for attention and then a female Administrator's dispassionate voice spoke. "86, report to the common room immediately for Adjustments."_

 _Katsuragi stopped in her tracks, then looked up at the speaker and its attached camera and microphone before answering, "Yes ma'am."_

 _The skinny little Sekirei girl then looked up at her friend Yosuga and then down at her friend Madoka, noticing Madoka's pretty, blue, eyes were filling with tears again and that Madoka's hand covered her trembling lips._

 _Yosuga carefully knelt so she was looking Katsuragi in the eyes then hugged the now-scared little Sekirei. "It's okay, 'Ragi-chan. You'll be fine, and when you come back you'll be tall like me and you'll be able to make fun of the fact you will have bigger boobies than me."_

 _Hugging Yosuga then turning and hugging Madoka, Katsuragi then nodded her head and tried to pretend to be brave. "Okay, I'll do that then, Yosu-chan. Bye, Mado-chan." Katsuragi hesitated then hugged both girls again, harder, whispering, "Thank you both for being my friends."_

 _Yosuga remained kneeling there in the hallway, with Madoka holding onto her right arm, the two of them watching Katsuragi run towards the Common Room until the dirty-blonde hair of the other girl disappeared behind a corner finally._

 _Yosuga slumped against the wall, no longer trying to hide how much pain she was in, now that Katsuragi was no longer there to be scared at the prospect of returning from Adjustments in such pain, herself. "Well, hopefully we will see her again soon, right, Mado-chan? Help me to our room, please? My head hurts so very badly, I don't think I can stand up again."_

" _Okay, Yosu-tan. Let us go on our hands and knees then. I will guide you and bring you water if you get thirsty and take care of you, I promise. I, I love you, Yosu-tan! Please never go away, please!"_

 _Yosuga smiled in spite of the blinding headache she was suffering. "I love you too, Mado-chan. And I promise I'll try to not go away. But right now I need to lay down, or my head might split open from the pounding in it."_

 _Madoka nodded seriously and then helped her best friend slowly crawl to her bunk, sparing a small bit of worry for their now-departed friend, 86 Katsuragi. The other girl had not been with Group 11 for long, maybe thirty sleeps, but she had been easy to get along with and Madoka thought the other blonde Sekirei might eventually be a truly close friend with her and Yosuga someday._

 _Madoka could not know then that she would not see 86 Katsuragi again until years had passed and Madoka just happened to be walking past a downtown Shin Tokyo alleyway where Katsuragi was cornered by 16 Toyotama, then delivered up to her Ashikabi, Higa._

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory drove the Jeep towards his family's apartment, carefully going the speed limit, using his turn signals meticulously, and stopping fully at all red lights. In the passenger seat, Madoka sat with her legs pulled up against her chest, her arms hugging her legs and her forehead resting on her knees.

Not exactly a picture of happiness and contentment.

He could not pay attention to that right now; there was a crazy man in a high-collared-white-cape laughing on the 20cm LED monitor in the center of the Jeep's dash.

"Gregory-kun, you certainly are not the sort of fellow we had in mind when we put the Sekirei Plan in motion. A forty-year-old schoolteacher at Tokyo Metro High and an American? However, I cannot deny your courage; your saving dear number 37 from those who pursued her was inspiring! Everyone watching here was moved by your courage! No wonder she was drawn to you in spite of… well, in spite of everything."

The glasses-wearing-lunatic who had hijacked Gregory's Jeep dash monitor, grinned widely as he said this. _"Everyone watching here, indeed, you nutcase? Message received."_ Gregory avoided grinding his teeth, but only barely. He made an effort to put his professional face on and smile courteously towards the dash monitor. _"Treat him like Principal-sama likes to be treated, can't go wrong with that I don't think."_

"Thank you, sir. It is my great privilege and honor to not only be Madoka-chan's Ashikabi but to be given the chance to participate in the glorious Sekirei Plan."

"Yes! The Sekirei Plan!" The lunatic seemed excited that Gregory knew of it. "That is the name of the contest you are now a part of, Gregory-kun. I see number 37 has already informed you. I wonder if you understood? You seem enthusiastic, so unlike most of the other Ashikabi who have met their destined Sekirei thus far!"

Gregory glanced at the screen then returned his attention to the road. "Yes, of course, sir. Madoka-chan fights secretly against the other Sekirei and I am her partner, her Ashikabi."

"You understand quickly! Perfect, Gregory-kun! Now, remember, this is a top-secret project. Now that you know of it, you have an obligation to keep silent about it. And, Gregory-kun, do not underestimate how far MBI's reach is. It would be very unfortunate if we had to act against you and your family."

At this, Madoka raised her head and looked over at Gregory's face. Her protest was cut off by Gregory's hand on her leg, squeezing warningly.

Gregory carefully kept his features in what he thought of as his professional face and smiled. "Of course, President Minaka. Nothing less would be expected. I trust that MBI's legal department will take care of all the traffic citations this vehicle accumulated in tonight's excitement? So as to keep the Plan secret, of course, and to guarantee Madoka-chan's Ashikabi isn't lost to Shin Tokyo's legal system for the duration?"

Hirohito Minaka's eyeglasses caught the reflection of whatever camera lights were illuminating him and the white-haired man laughed again. "Oh, I _like_ you, Gregory-kun! I shall allow it; you need not worry about any repercussions from the authorities for your rescue of dear Number 37."

"Excellent, thank you, sir. Other than Madoka-chan needing replacements for her identification and her debit cards then I assume she and I are ready to start participating in the Sekirei Plan. Our intention to defeat all the others and be the last standing will never flag, I assure you sir."

Madoka's look of outrage and shock at this bizarre pronouncement from her Ashikabi was also cut off by Gregory's hand squeezing her thigh hard, again.

"You will find, Gregory-kun," Minaka smiled creepily as he leaned in towards the camera, "that everything will be waiting at your residence. Now, I am very busy so good luck to you, Gregory-kun and to you, number 37!"

The monitor returned to GPS navigation, which had been on the display before the President of MBI had suddenly appeared upon it. Gregory's hand squeezed Madoka's thigh again more gently then he focused on turning into the parking lot of the O'Donnell's apartment.

Sure enough, there was a black luxury car idling in front of the apartment. A large Japanese man in a tight fitting silk suit stood next to the sleek vehicle, holding a cardboard box with the number "37" clearly stamped onto the side.

"Mado-chan, that looks like your care package from MBI. Let's get it and start making our plans for how we will win the Sekirei Plan, eh?"

Madoka looked at Gregory as though she had never seen him before or as though he had grown a second head, his behavior not making any sense to the girl. Gregory turned to the left to face her and his left eyelid lowered in a slow wink.

"Ah, yes, of course, Gregory-kun. Let us do… that."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

"It's eight goddamn o'clock, Greg! And not even a phone call? And when I tried to call you I got rolled to voice-mail? What the fuck, Greg? Where in the hell have you been?" Karen O'Donnell's voice was piercingly loud in the apartment, her anger clear to anyone within earshot.

"I told you, Karen! I was at the school late, you know how semester finals time is, and on the way home I stopped at a store and then came on home. I got caught up in a conversation with someone on the phone in the Jeep, but…"

"GPS showed the Jeep at some little grocery store not even near here, Greg. Why did you need to go there?"

"Mado-chan needed to stop for…"

"Mado-chan is it? Goddamnit Greg I've about had as much of…"

"Karen, please, please. I've got three hundred practice tests to grade before I can sleep and I'm going to be lucky to get three hours of sleep before class because of it! I told you I'm sorry I didn't call, but can you please just give me a break?"

"Don't talk over me, Greg!"

Mishi got up from the bed and shut the door, then used her foot to push a towel under the door to cut off what could still be heard. Looking at the towel appraisingly, she poked it with her toe a few more times to wedge it firmly under the door. The teen girl muttered, "I think I've had enough of listening to that. Could they be any ruder? They aren't the only people who live here, you know."

Glancing back at the bed, Mishi noted that her roomie of the last week was lying curled up and staring at the wall, already in the clothes she usually slept in and tucked under the sheet. Something was wrong, for sure, but Mishi was damned if she could figure out what.

"Mado?" Mishi sat on the edge of the bed, looking at her new friend worriedly. "You usually don't go to sleep before eating dinner... right?"

"Thank you Mishi but I am not hungry. Really I am just tired and want to sleep."

Mishi grimaced but pressed on, "Come on, Mado, what happened? Did… did something happen between you and Dad? Did he do something to upset you?"

Madoka's response to that question surprised and startled Mishi. Madoka looked… angry. Angry at the suggestion Mishi's Dad had done something? The pretty blonde raised herself up on her elbows to look at Mishi, her blue eyes more than a bit fierce, even intimidating, and her voice was sharper than Mishi had heard it before.

"No, Gregory did not do _anything_ wrong and he… he should _not be yelled at_." Madoka fell back to her pillow before continuing, "Please, Mishi, I am very tired, just let me sleep. Please."

Mishi held up her hands and acquiesced, "Okay, okay, I'm sorry for pressuring you, Mado. But if you need to talk to someone I'm here, okay? We're friends, right? You can talk to your friends about anything, okay?"

"Yes. Okay. And I hope we are friends, Mishi." Madoka shut her eyes and turned her head away. "If you could turn off the light and just play soft music so we cannot hear… her yelling, then I would be very grateful."

"Okay, Mado. Get some sleep, we'll talk tomorrow."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

It was after midnight; Kakizaki was not used to meeting with his boss so late. Normally Kakizaki would be in the midst of his entertainments by now but tonight Sekirei 86 had returned late with a story of failure to capture an unnamed Sekirei in the west of the city. Higa Izumi had called Kakizaki to his penthouse office, no doubt for an explanation.

"I assure you, Higa-sama, I will inflict whatever is necessary to motivate this worthless number 86 to make whatever effort…"

"Kakizaki," Higa not only spoke over his assistant but also turned to scowl at him from his seat across the luxurious desk that graced the office, "it was not 86 who failed to provide intelligence on where any additional Sekirei would be released. That it found any unwinged Sekirei at all in a metropolis that counts over nineteen million inhabitants rather strongly implies that these Sekirei have some way to sense each other, even if they are not able to reliably use this ability for our benefit. To be clear, I hold _you_ responsible for our lack of intelligence and the poor progress that lack is causing, not number 86."

Kakizaki broke out in a cold sweat, his tailored high-collared shirt suddenly feeling tight around his neck. He answered quickly, projecting confidence, "Of course, Higa-sama. I will make additional efforts to motivate number 22 then…"

"Again, you fail to understand." Higa spoke over Kakizaki again. The assistant paled at how far out of the grace of his superior he seemed to have fallen, all without realizing. "If caning and raping number 22 was going to make her work more effectively then it would have already done so. I begin to suspect that you are too focused on your entertainments and _not_ focused on effectively motivating our tools." Higa turned to look out of the office windows, which provided an unparalleled view of eastern Shin Tokyo.

Higa Izumi silenced Kakizaki's protests with a glance then returned to his study of the late-night technopolis sprawled out below his office. After letting his assistant stew in silence for a precise thirty seconds, Higa continued, "Motivating 22 will go forward more subtly, Kakizaki. You will take 86 and do with her whatever you wish; she will assume this is for her failure in capturing whatever Sekirei it was in the west tonight. Make sure her punishment is imaginative. Possibly involve some of our new recruits in Special Security; those Australian men would likely do. Instead of having 16 there to insure 86's cooperation you will use 22 for this purpose."

At this Kakizaki frowned in puzzlement, "Number 22? If 86 is receiving discipline instead of 22 what does that…"

Higa yet again spoke over his increasingly disappointing secretary, "In treating 86 more severely than 22 has been treated thus far _and_ doing so as 22 observes, your intelligent servant will get the message, I assure you. Number 22's fear of being treated in the same manner as 86 will motivate her far more effectively than having her beaten and gang-raped, herself, Kakizaki."

Kakizaki bowed deeply, "It will be exactly as you say, Higa-sama."

As Kakizaki made to leave the office, Higa reminded him, "If nothing else, you must find out for me when number 18, called Ichiya, will be released. We require her to team with 16 if we are ever going to face MBI's resources."

"Of course, Higa-sama."

Kakizaki took the elevator to the special, secure, rooms where the Sekirei were kept and where they were… motivated. Kakizaki was not happy that Higa was interfering with his own Sekirei, number 22, but at least he had been given permission to go further than ever before in his treatment of number 86. While abusing number 22 _was_ entertaining, she was noticeably older than 86; wider of hip and possessing much larger breasts. Breaking her reserve was a challenge, but she just wasn't as physically appealing as the lithe, youthful, and _formerly_ innocent, number 86.

At least the disfavor of his superior was not a complete disaster, yet. There was still time to salvage this situation.

And there was still time to enjoy the sweetness of 86's treatment tonight; just the idea of the somber, blue-eyed, blonde being ill-treated by a few of the Special Security gorillas put a genuine smile on Kakizaki's face. He would bring two of the huge, muscular, Special Security agents with him tonight, for the task of introducing 86 to this new level of punishment for falling short of expectations. Even numbers always worked out best for these sorts of things as Kakizaki had learned through observation, and the threat of additional numbers _next_ time could be held over 86 to provide even more motivation.

Sweetness indeed.

 _ **The End of Book One**_

(Book Two will be posted 5/15/15)

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* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 ** _Terminology_**

 **Winging** – Through a kiss, traditionally, according to Madoka, but also appears to be doable via other contact between an unwinged Sekirei and an Ashikabi. Just any physical contact will not necessarily produce the life-long bonding that the winging represents. An intimate act such as kissing or other invasive physical act by an Ashikabi to a Sekirei seems required.

At the moment of the Winging, the Ashikabi/Sekirei psychic bond is established. The Sekirei manifests a large, radiant, pair of wings from high on the back, around the shoulder blades. Before these intangible 'wings' fade, a glowing symbol in the shape of a stylized bird, yin/yang sign, and four tomoe, appears as well above and behind the Sekirei and settles onto their back, imprinting itself in a visible and permanent manner, like a tattoo. See the attached illustration.  
Obviously, the presence of the yin/yang indicates a non-alien origin for at least some part of this manifestation of metapsychic power. The bird is, no doubt, symbolic of the avian ancestry the Sekirei claim (in contradiction to all evidence that they are profoundly mammalian).

Madoka says it is common knowledge among the Sekirei that once an Ashikabi wings a Sekirei they are bound together as mates for life, nothing can break this bond. She is sadly unable to source this "common knowledge" though, just as she cannot explain other, scattered, Sekirei traditions and myths.

The Sekirei have a traditional phrase they invoke after they are winged by their Ashikabi: "forever and ever". This phrase emphasizes the permanent nature of this bond. Like all of the traditions and myths the Sekirei have it is difficult to determine the origin of this phrase. It could be from their homeworld, it could be something MBI invented, or any of a dozen other explanations. Unless we can interview Sekirei 01 or review any computer records in the Sekirei ship it is unlikely we will know the answer to that question.

Winging provides the Sekirei with additional abilities, both a permanent across the board increase in their known powers and some super-version of their powers that is unlocked using a chant, called a Norito (an obscure Japanese word for a formal sort of Shinto prayer according to my more traditional Japanese dictionaries, so quite likely not an alien word for this power-activating chant).

It may also be required for a Sekirei to be winged to their Ashikabi before they can reproduce, though Madoka was less clear on this point.  
There is definitely a psychic connection forged between the Ashikabi and the Sekirei. After bonding with Madoka under circumstances that were less than ideal, even I was able to get a sense of her emotional state that was far more immediate than guessing based on her demeanor and words. One would speculate that this would make it difficult for Ashikabi and Sekirei to deceive each other, for better and for worse. My perception of Madoka's emotions, even her physical location, was immediately far beyond what normal senses could explain. The limits of this 'sense' needs to be tested and quantified.  
What other effects the bond might have on Sekirei and Ashikabi also needs to be investigated and documented.

MBI has stressed to the Sekirei that the first and by far most important priority in the Sekirei Plan is for the Sekirei to find an Ashikabi. Most Sekirei feel there is one 'fated' Ashikabi for them though most acknowledge they may not be lucky enough to find that Ashikabi. This is similar to human girls' insistence that there is 'the one' perfect Prince Charming out there for them, as well.

* * *

 _ **On Sekirei Alienness**_

The question as to whether, and to what degree, the Sekirei are alien is at once critical, and yet, unimportant. For our purposes, we will refer to the Sekirei as the 108 beings who were recovered from the crashed space ship on Kamakura Island by Hiroto Minaka and company. As well, hypothetical other ships in the same colonization fleet which may have landed on Earth in earlier ages would contain Sekirei, though their descendants would likely be Terran Human/Sekirei hybrids rather than the 108 attempting to keep to themselves and breed true, based on what little we know about the supposed mission of integration with the local dominant intelligent life, Terran Humans.

The species of intelligent life which built the ships and stocked them with the 108 transport tanks and their biological cargo will not be called "Sekirei", as there is good reason to consider them a different species entirely (ie, unable to breed with Earth humans, likely to have a completely different evolution, chemistry, and morphology from Earth humans). We will refer to the originators of the colonization effort as the "Kouten" until we have better information as to what they prefer to be called.

What we know about the Sekirei, at least second hand:

They can breed with Terran Humans. De facto this means they are the same species, homo sapiens. As it is extremely unlikely that homo sapiens evolved on a second world, with no common ancestor between the two species, we have to look for other explanations for the fact that the Sekirei are homo sapiens.

They have abilities that are not commonly demonstrated by Terran Humans. Psychokinesis, mindspeech, farsight, these abilities may be latent in some Terran Humans but in the Sekirei they seem common and operant. This marks them as distinct from Terran Humans.

The Sekirei are all notably not only _healthy_ examples of homo sapiens, but they are specifically _beautiful_ to the eyes of Earth humans. As standards of beauty vary based on culture and time period (but remaining within a fairly narrow range, surprisingly), one speculates that each ship contained different ethnicities of Earth humans, attractive to whichever part of the globe they were targeted towards. Alternatively, the Sekirei themselves change based on the standards they perceive in the Earth humans they encounter (see "Sekirei Plasticity Theory", later in this Notebook). The beauty of the Sekirei is an important data point, even a critical point, in our guesses about the nature and origin of their bodies.

Anyone who does any serious study in the fields of exobiology or astrobiology rapidly comes to the conclusion that while there may indeed be intelligent life in this universe which has appeared and evolved completely separately from what has occurred on Earth, the vastness of space and the great age of the universe implies that the odds of encountering any such truly alien intelligent life by mankind is incredibly minute.

The entire history of humankind, from Neanderthal to homo sapiens, is but a blink of an eye in the age of the Milky Way Galaxy, much less the universe itself. That two species might evolve, completely separately on worlds separated by interstellar space and they just happen to do so close enough that they might encounter each other at some point during a simultaneous blink of an eye in time is almost laughably unlikely.

Note, we are speaking of life from a _completely separate_ world, one where life evolved from microbial beginnings as it has, clearly, on Earth, and without any contamination possible from Earth's native life due to interstellar space. If one discovers living microbes on Mars we have not found proof that life may evolve independently of Earth. We have only discovered what is, more likely, cross contamination from Earth to Mars, by hardy microbial life.

But intelligent life from another star system entirely?

Assuming such incredible odds were overcome, that in the blink of an eye that makes up all of mankind's history on Earth and in the separate blink of an eye that makes up all of (for instance) Kouten's history on their world, that these two blinks are simultaneous and that the two star systems are close enough in the great vastness of our galaxy, much less the universe, let us look at what would be likely even if such amazingly small odds as those were overcome by chance.

95% of life on Earth is built upon six elements; carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulphur (called CHNOPS). These six elements are the building blocks of virtually all life on Earth, indicating that almost all life on Earth has a common antediluvian ancestor.

The other 5% of life on Earth are based on other elements. These terran life forms are those that did not come from the same ancient single-celled ancestor from which the other 95% evolved. That common single-celled ancestor for the 95%, built upon the six elements listed above, was present some 3.5 billion years ago on this planet. The other 5%, those "alien" life forms that live among us on Earth, are _still_ more closely related to me and you than _any_ life that developed on a hypothetical world of Kouten.

Even among the 95% of life on Earth that shares a common background in the warm seas of 3.5 billion years ago, there is vast diversity. On Earth there is an estimated 5,490 species of mammals. All 5,490 of those species are our incredibly close relatives, compared to the rest of life on Earth. There are 9,998 species of birds. 31,300 species of fish. The 63,649 species of vertebrates, including homo sapiens, on Earth are all practically identical to each other, compared to the other forms of life which make up that 95% which is based on the six elements above. Homo Sapiens is incredibly closely related to sea bass, compared to how close we are related to any of the 1,305,250 invertebrate species on Earth, for example.

Much less the 1.5 million species of fungi.

Earth humans are far, _far_ , more closely related, in every way possible, to those 1.5 million different species of fungi than we are to the 5% of life on this world which is based on chemical formations other than carbon/hydrogen/nitrogen/oxygen/phosphorous/sulphur. We have common ancestry to that 95%, including the fungi, whereas the 5% of truly 'other' life on Earth formed from completely different elements we have nothing in common with at all.

Needless to say that 5% makes up some of the strangest and most 'weird' life on this planet. Even the 95% we are related to make for some truly bizarre and 'different' forms of life. Including life which evolved in radian form, instead of bilateral form (which is most common).

So the life which evolved on Kouten would, we must assume, be just as varied as that on Earth. There is no evidence that the CHNOPS elements are universally superior for the construction of life, only that those were the elements which were most successful here on Earth in our own unique environment and circumstances. There's as much chance Kouten is based around silicon instead of carbon and live in liquid nitrogen seas, as anything else.

Having already handwaved the vast odds against homo sapiens of Earth and Kouten life existing at the same time period and close enough in physical distance to actually come into contact with each other, next we have to consider the odds of the form of life on both worlds being very different from each other. We already know that we, homo sapiens, have a far closer relationship to radially symmetrical animals such as jellyfish than we would have to _any_ life which evolved, separately from Earth, on Kouten.

Do you look at a jellyfish and feel kinship or a connection? Do you see a reproduction partner? Odds are you do not. One… certainly hopes you do not.

And yet you are _incredibly_ closer in relation to that radial life form than you are to _any_ life on Kouten.

That the Sekirei appear to have a kinship and a connection with Terran Humans, specifically appearing as _attractive reproduction partners_ to Earth's humans, indicates they _must_ have been made for that purpose. There is almost no chance at all that the form and chemistry of their bodies here on Earth is the same as that of the originator species on Kouten, if any such exists in fact.

Science fiction aside, anyone who seriously proposes such simultaneous parallel evolution of life forms with no common ancestor on worlds separated by interstellar space simply does not understand the factors involved in such a proposition.

We can come to some tentative hypothesis concerning the Sekirei, just from what humankind _does_ know about exobiology, evolution, and morphology.

The Sekirei are not the Kouten, as far as their biology is concerned.

The Sekirei were likely specifically designed by the Kouten for their mission to integrate with Earth's dominant intelligent life, homo sapiens. And yes, I find the therefore implied level of technology more terrifying than the Kouten's demonstrated ability to cross interstellar space.

Sekirei myths about themselves having avian ancestry may be based in fact, but it would be more likely the _Kouten_ themselves being avian or from avian descent than the _Sekirei_.

There may be some part of the Kouten that was included in the Sekirei. The 'tama core' or metapsychic profile or the 'soul' or whatever term one wishes to use for the demonstrable (with the Sekirei at least) aspect of their intelligence and being which exists separately from the meat of their bodies and brains, may well be this Kouten life element which is a part of the Sekirei. Does this Kouten life aspect breed true from Sekirei to Sekirei/Human hybrid? Hints indicate it does, though the degree of operancy or latency seems to depend on the percentage of Sekirei ancestry.

At some point, I hope to have the opportunity to examine whatever records MBI recovered from Kamakura Island. Or, even less likely but more desirably, personally examine the remnant of the crashed ship at Kamakura myself.

If the opportunity ever arises to find and speak to the Sekirei 01, the one adult Sekirei aboard the crashed ship, the questions about the native life on Kouten will be at the top of my list of inquiries.

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* * *

Started Sep 28 2014  
Completed Oct 5 2014  
Originally Posted May 7 2015


	5. Bk2 - Ch1 Changes

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 2.1 – Ch 5 Changes

 _Author's Note: This chapter earns the M rating of this story. If you are allergic to citrus, please spare yourself the trouble and do not continue reading this story.  
Bonus Material: Pictures (NSFW) and a Map of Locations from Book Two have been posted to the author's Tumblr. A link to the bonus material post can be found on the author's Profile page. _

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o.0.O.0.o

 _{Farsense or other Metafaculties}_  
 _[Memories]  
"Internal dialogue."_

Saturday, December 21st, 2019  
Yoyogi neighborhood, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

Gregory O'Donnell and his Sekirei, number 37 Madoka, walked away from the Yoyogi Post Office, the easiest Post Office to get to from the O'Donnell's apartment in west Shin Tokyo, and Gregory was speaking to the blonde girl in a low voice. "So, that's how you use a card to withdraw cash at an ATM. Here in Japan most ATM's are at post-offices and there are post-offices seemingly every ten meters or so, so you should be able to find easy access to funds at any time. It looks like the daily limit on your ATM withdrawals is ¥500,000, which is the normal limit for about every checking account card at any bank in Japan."

He slowed his pace as they approached the parking garage where his orange Jeep was parked. "The ¥500,000 a day thing always seemed kind of insane to me, as an American. I believe our bankcards in the States have a $500US per day limit, which is about ¥50,000. So, 10% as much as the ATM's here allow, but that's just the way it is in Japan. A lot more businesses here are cash-only so cash is more easily available than in the States. Japanese bank customers wouldn't put up with a low limit like U.S. banks typically have on their ATMs."

Madoka nodded, her blonde hair swirling about. "And the paper yen I get from the machine, the cash, can be used to buy goods. I do not know why, Gregory-kun, but for some reason I had not thought of money and cash to be the same thing."

Gregory laughed as they approached the Jeep. He'd told Madoka they needed to avoid talking about anything important in the Jeep or in the apartment, since MBI had already demonstrated how easily they could tap into any electronics Gregory owned, so they loitered in the parking garage before driving back home.

He responded to the hurt look Madoka gave him. "Hey, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing because of how crazy the situation is. I can't imagine the millions of everyday ideas and concepts that you have a completely different viewpoint on, due to the way MBI raised all of you. It's really kind of mind boggling."

Madoka expression did not change much, but Gregory could tell it was a playful scowl now. He continued, "I don't think of using cash much, anymore. Almost everything I buy I can use my card. However, there are many cash-only businesses here in Shin Tokyo, so it's a good idea to carry cash. It's just something I've gotten out of the habit of doing."

Gregory gestured at the handbag Madoka was clutching tightly, indicating the stack of five-hundred ¥1,000 notes contained within. "The ¥500,000 we just got from that ATM, that's about $5,000US. That's quite a bit of money, Mado-chan, and you can get that every single day. By comparison, if you combined my salary at the school plus the generous housing allowance they grant me it comes to about ¥375,000 a month. So, what you've got in your purse there is a lot more than I earn in a whole month at a professional job."

Madoka blinked then asked, "But you like your job so you do not have to be paid so much to do it, right?"

It was Gregory's turn to blink in astonishment. "That's an… interesting view of how jobs and pay works, and, you know, it should probably be more like that. But it's not, not really. I enjoy my work but that's simply my good luck that it ended up that way. I assure you, the teachers at Tokyo Metro High who have to drag themselves into the school every day and who can't stand being around kids get paid the same I do."

Madoka thought about that for a moment, then she asked, "And I can get that much every day out of the ATM things? Is that normal?"

"Yep. Well, like I said, it's normal that Japanese ATM's allow up to that much every day in withdrawals. It's _not_ normal for someone to have an unlimited MBI Platinum Card. MBI told you that the cards were so you and your Ashikabi could focus on the 'game', so I'm guessing they meant unlimited when they said unlimited. In addition to pulling out that much cash every day we can use the card to buy stuff at businesses which take cards."

He looked down to meet the eyes of his barely-five-foot-tall Sekirei, "I do wonder how much you could actually ring up every day before MBI starts squealing about it. From now on, every single day, you need to go to one of the post-offices and pull out the max, the ¥500,000 that's allowed, from one of the ATMs and hide it. The time might come when we really need that money, so for now, just pull out the max and stash it at the apartment. After Christmas, we'll see about getting a place for you to live and I'm going to do some planning on how we can best use this resource."

Gregory did not notice the unhappy look on Madoka's face at the mention of getting _her_ a place to live.

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Sunday, December 22nd, 2019

"Looks like the London Jaguars are going to the AFC Championship game." Gregory O'Donnell said from the living room couch, to no one in particular.

His daughter Mishi, sitting at the dining table with her boyfriend, Yashiro Tomo, looked up from her lunch towards where her father was reading the sports news on his tablet. Looking to her left, she met her blonde-haired roomie's eyes. Madoka, a blank look of incomprehension on her gorgeous face, was no help, so Mishi looked to her right where Tomo was reading something on his phone. Tomo shrugged at Mishi but Mishi was not letting him get away with that. She glared at her boyfriend and gestured towards where her dad was sitting with her chin.

Tomo got the point; he was the guy, it was something about sports, so he had to respond.

"Ah, yeah, so it seems, Mr. Gregory. That's great. Right?" Tomo was floundering, he obviously had no idea what the conversation was even about. Mishi giggled at Tomo's predicament.

Gregory, still reading, just smirked and let Tomo twist in the wind for a moment. He was not sure what Tomo had done to upset Mishi last week but he was aware enough to know Tomo was in the doghouse and he figured he could do his part to make the young man suffer. And give Tomo a chance to score some positive points, if he was up to it.

"Sure, I guess it is, Tomo. I'm more a New England Patriots fan but I think it's a good thing the league is having some success with their UK experiment. And besides, don't you think the Jaguars revolutionary 2-5 defense will match up well against the Texans neo-run-and-shoot offense?"

Tomo turned to look at Mishi, his eyes wide, shrugging at her with an insistent look on his face for her to bail him out.

Mishi just looked at him, then very deliberately turned to Madoka and asked, "So, Mado, how are those new shoes working out for you? Did they end up fitting right?"

Tomo shot her a look of hurt betrayal then rallied with a reply to Gregory, "Ah, yes sir! I think they will eh… match up just perfectly. Yes."

Gregory chuckled and looked over at the three teens, "Yes, just so, Tomo. On the small chance you're still dating my daughter next Sunday, maybe you could come over and watch the game with us."

Mishi and Madoka both giggled at this and Tomo gamely replied, "I would be glad to, Mr. Gregory, thank you."

Mishi gave her boyfriend a small smile for his putting up with their teasing and Gregory returned to reading his tablet. There, he had done his part in giving Tomo a chance to score points and the kid rallied to do so. Gregory liked Tomo, even though the young man had passed on taking Gregory's senior English course in order to focus on more mathematics in this, his Senior year. Gregory forgave the snub since he knew Tomo was aiming for an engineering school after graduation in March.

He hoped Tomo attended a local university, otherwise he would be dealing with Mishi trying to sustain a long distance relationship and that was not something Gregory was looking forward to. While Gregory was not wild about the fact that Mishi and Tomo were having sex, he would rather deal with that than try to manage a daughter being distracted from her own senior year in high school by worrying about a boyfriend who was away at college.

Gregory tried to concentrate on reading the NFL news on his tablet and shake the subject of his daughter's love life out of his head. He already had enough grey hairs and _that_ subject was guaranteed to give him more. It was so much easier when his son Mark had been sixteen. First, by the time Mark was that age he was living with Karen's parents in New Hampshire so he could keep attending school there while Gregory, Karen, and Mishi moved to Japan. Second, all Gregory had to do was make sure the pharmacist in town knew to quietly charge Gregory's credit card on file for any condoms Mark needed. Simple! All Gregory had to worry about was making sure the boy had all the free condoms he wanted, no matter what the Pope said about birth control.

Until the Pope volunteered to personally adopt all unplanned babies, Gregory was counting on latex to save him from premature grandfatherhood.

Raising the daughter was a completely different ballgame. Once Gregory got the word from his wife, Karen, that Mishi was likely sexually active with her boyfriend, Gregory had insisted that Tomo at least have the balls to assure Gregory that Tomo had access to all the latex _he_ might need. Gregory wondered if Tomo had ever confided to Mishi that her father had cornered him at school under the pretense of a teacher-student conference and interrogated him about condoms.

Gregory sighed and tried, _again_ , to focus on reading the sports page.

Mishi's conversation with Madoka distracted him further. "Mado, thank you for going with us to Mass this morning. You looked awesome in that dress! I'm so jealous; it never looked so good on me, that's for sure."

"Thank you, Mishi, for letting me borrow it, it was very nice. I do not think I have ever worn a dress before."

The look Madoka received from Mishi _and_ Tomo let her know she had said something wrong. She looked back and forth between her tablemates, unsure how to retract the obviously ill placed comment.

"I'm sure," Gregory said, from the living room, "she meant she hadn't worn a dress like that one, not that she hadn't worn a dress at all before."

Madoka nodded, "Yes, just so."

Mishi, obviously not buying into the explanation but also obviously not willing to press the issue, returned to watching Tomo toying with his phone.

Madoka caught Gregory's eye and smiled at him in appreciation for the save.

When Gregory's wife walked through the living room and told Gregory she was going to the store, he was focused on his tablet instead of looking at Madoka at the dining table, though it was a close thing.

o.0.O.0.o

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Gregory walked down the short hallway towards the master bedroom, noticing the bedroom door across the hall from the master was cracked open with the light on in the bedroom. He knew his daughter was watching the TV in the living room with her boyfriend, so he glanced through the six-inch open gap curiously. He was stopped in his tracks by what he saw.

Madoka, _"My Sekirei,"_ the thought came to him very strongly, was facing the large mirror on the back of the dresser, in front of the bedroom's one window, and was obviously changing clothes. At the very moment Gregory glanced through the open doorway, she was pulling the white t-shirt she had been wearing up and over her head.

Gregory's eyes grew wide as Madoka's bare breasts bounced free of the t-shirt. With her arms extended over her head, gripping the t-shirt, he had a completely unobstructed view of her magnificent breasts for just a second. A very long second, in which the view of the swell of pale skin and the small, pert, light-pink, nipples, was burned into his mind.

Too quickly, the t-shirt was off and tossed aside and then Gregory was looking right into Madoka's blue eyes in the dresser mirror. Gregory felt his face burning as he realized the pretty blonde was completely aware of him standing there in the hall and ogling her naked upper body. Just as Gregory turned and retreated to his own bedroom, he saw Madoka looking with sleepy, half-lidded, eyes into the mirror and then she actually _winked_ at him.

" _Oh, man, I am way too old for this. But...oh my god, those were awesome…"_

o.0.O.0.o

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Madoka lay on her back on Mishi's big comfy bed, wearing the tank top and shorts she liked to sleep in, with one leg pulled up and the other flat out and under the sheet, staring at the ceiling. She barely noticed Mishi moving around the room, getting her own sleeping clothes on.

She was trying to figure out why she had so deliberately flashed Gregory this evening. Each step along the way had seemed innocent enough, but in retrospect, she knew she had left the door open on purpose, knew she stood right where she stood on purpose, pulled the shirt over her head as soon as she sensed her Ashikabi lingering in the hallway.

She knew she had deliberately pulled the shirt against her chest so her boobs would bounce nicely when she pulled the shirt over her head.

The question was… _why_? Yes, Gregory was her Ashikabi now, but not because he was her first choice or even much of a choice at all. And yes, the kiss that finally connected the two of them was… well, it was something way beyond any of the kisses she'd experienced with Toyotama-onee-sama.

So her Ashikabi knew how to kiss, so what? He _should_ ; he was older than dirt and was married as well. Of course he knew how to kiss! But that's no excuse for flashing him!

The moment she had met his eyes in the mirror she could see the effect she'd had on him. He was stunned speechless, to her great amusement. In addition to being amused, she knew his very impressed expression had _made her feel good_. She realized she had _liked_ what his appreciation and admiration felt like. Why? She certainly had never thought about teasing or flirting with the man before. In fact, she had kept her distance as best she could. She had put up with his glances with good grace but certainly had never courted them. She had found it a bit creepy even, though he _had_ made every effort to be subtle with his ogling. But then today she deliberately bounced her boobs at him!

Why?

It had to be the bond, there was no other explanation. And if that was the case then she was even more grateful that she had avoided being captured by Katsuragi to be winged by Higa. What horrors being bonded to a man like that would inflict were beyond her imagination, but that did not stop her from knowing they would have been horrors.

She wondered what the bond was doing to her, other than making her like flashing her boobs at her Ashikabi.

Three days had passed since Gregory had kissed her, _"So very, very, well,"_ she could not help but think, and thereby saved her from a fate worse than death. At first she was upset about the loss of her chances to get a better Ashikabi and had been unhappy about fate forcing her to be bonded to such an older, boring, sort of person as Gregory O'Donnell.

Now she was less sure about how she felt.

"Mado! Are you asleep with your eyes open or something?" Mishi's voice snapped Madoka out of her reverie.

"What, Mishi? I am sorry, perhaps I did nod off. What did you ask?" Madoka made the effort to put her least confrontational tone into the question. For some reason she and Mishi had been getting on each other's nerves for the last few days, and Madoka could not figure out why. It just seemed that her American friend had been very pushy and nosey all weekend. She had been noticing many of Mishi's irritating traits over the last few days. _"Really, just as well I avoided being bonded to her for life. I had no idea how irritating she could be!"_

"I was asking," Mishi replied, as she climbed into bed and started hogging all of the covers, "if you thought Tomo had suffered enough for his being so rude to me when we went shopping last week. He really was minding himself this weekend, he was about as nice as he could be and paid all of his attention to me even when you were with us and that's not easy!"

The grin on the face of the other girl made Madoka want to turn over and ignore her. Another conversation about Tomo, with Mishi pointing out that he had been ignoring Madoka as though she was not even there all weekend. Why did Mishi think it was so important to remind Madoka that Mishi's boyfriend actually paid attention to _Mishi_ , as he was supposed to? Madoka resisted the temptation to shut out her only female friend and tried to at least pretend to be interested in what Mishi so obviously wanted to talk about.

"Tomo seemed to genuinely be sorry for his behavior on the shopping trip, Mishi. And he certainly was being very kind and attentive to you this weekend." Madoka suppressed a sigh and turned to look the sixteen-year-old American girl. "I think that if you think he should be forgiven, then he should be forgiven."

Mishi pursed her lips, her face screwing up into an expression of intense thought. It was, Madoka had to admit, completely cute. Mishi got away with murder due to being so cute, at least where her father and boyfriend were concerned; they were both completely wrapped around the girl's finger. "Maybe so, Mado. But maybe he's just horny and pretending to be the good boyfriend just so he can get his dick wet, hmm?"

This time Madoka's blush was not nearly as intense as was usual from Mishi's blunt words. _This_ time Madoka caught the look on Mishi's face, where Mishi shifted her eyes to look at Madoka and see how the blonde girl was reacting to the blatantly sexual comment. Madoka realized something at that moment. _"She is doing it on purpose! Grrrr, that is so wrong!"_

Mishi laughed at the growing expression of outrage on Madoka's idol-like-face. "Oh my god Mado, you're just too easy to wind up. I love you, you know that? We've really got to get you past the blushing virgin thing, though. It's cute, but you're going to end up fainting like Hinata in 'Naruto' the first time you get a real kiss! She even fainted when Naruto kissed her at their wedding. It was so sweet!"

"Hn," was all Madoka could reply, since she was biting her own tongue to keep from telling Mishi just exactly how well her first real kiss with a man had gone and exactly who it was who had kissed her, _"So well, so thoroughly, so perfectly,"_.

No, better to let her friend enjoy her teasing. As Mishi settled into sleep in her ( _argh!)_ irritatingly clingy way, Madoka's thoughts returned to her Ashikabi, to what it felt like to kiss him. A subject she had been dwelling on every day and every night since it had happened.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Monday evening found the O'Donnell's and their houseguest enjoying Chinese take-out that Karen had picked up on the way home from her office at the Red Cross.

They got take-out twice a week usually, since it saved so much time and effort from preparing dinner and cleaning up afterwards. And it was almost as cheap to feed the three of them, or four of them now, with take-out than it cost to buy all the ingredients and prepare a meal from scratch. Besides, none of them were going to cook Chinese in the sort of variety and in the quality available at her favorite Chinese place. Karen could bring home enough to fill herself, Greg, Mishi, and Madoka, for less than ¥4,000.

"You should try the Mandarin Beef, Mado," Greg told their houseguest as they all filled their plates from the half dozen paper boxes on the kitchen counter. "Oh, and the Sweet and Sour Chicken. It's great, especially with the sauce."

Karen noticed that Madoka smiled up at Gregory from where she stood next to him at the kitchen counter, "I will do so. I do not think I have ever had Mandarin Beef, thank you for the suggestion, Gregory."

Karen sat at the table with her plate and her glass of tea, a scowl on her face. She asked, as Gregory was taking his seat, "Greg, how did the first day of finals go?"

"Good, good. Tomorrow is the last day of the semester, all the finals for the autumn semester will be done, and then it's off work until the 6th of January." Gregory sat at the table next to Karen then reached over and picked a piece of Tsung Pao Beef from her plate to sample.

Karen snarled, "Damnit Greg, I hate it when you do that. You know you _could_ get your own if you had wanted some, right?"

Gregory held up his hands in mock surrender, "Sorry, sorry. I guess you failed 'sharing' in kindergarten, didn't you, dear?"

Karen did not reply, just glared at her husband and stabbed a piece of cabbage fiercely, ignoring Mishi's giggle at her father's quip. As she chewed the slice of cabbage, Karen glanced sideways at Madoka, watching for any sign the blonde girl was laughing too.

There was no laughter, the girl's face was completely neutral. Suspiciously so. Regardless, Karen did not like the way the young, beautiful, sexy, young, blonde, gorgeous, young, curvy, young, girl was looking at Greg. Karen angrily stood from the table, knocking the chair over behind her from the abruptness. "You know what, I'm not hungry. Just have all of it."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory chewed his Mandarin Beef silently after Karen had stormed off to the bedroom, leaving the three at the table in an awkward stillness.

Mishi spoke up first, "Dad?"

Gregory glanced over at his sixteen-year-old daughter and shrugged. "I don't know, sweetie. Please put her plate in the microwave; maybe she'll eat later."

Mishi did so then resumed eating her own Sweet and Sour Pork without any more discussion. Gregory spotted an unusually intense expression on Madoka's face, an expression Gregory did not identify right off. And quickly enough the blonde girl was looking down at her plate, expertly moving rice from the plate to her mouth with her chopsticks.

It was later in the evening before Gregory recognized the look on Madoka's finely featured face, but… why she would be _protective_ of _him_? He was positive she had been restraining herself from jumping up and putting herself between him and Karen.

Gregory hoped that was not going to become a problem. If quiet and reserved Madoka suddenly found not only the courage to get into Karen's face but also thought it was necessary, it would not end well at all for anyone.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Tuesday, 24 December, 2019  
Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

Tuesday afternoon found Gregory leaving work late, which was predictable given that the previous two days had been filled with semester exams and that tomorrow, Christmas, marked the start of the winter break for the schools in Shin Tokyo. He'd stayed until he had wrapped up the last of his work so that he could enjoy his time off over the holidays.

Sunset was still a bit off, but there were long shadows being cast by the late afternoon sun through the school's collection of ume trees. The line of plum trees across the back of the parking lot were bare of leaf or blossom this time of year but by spring they would bloom so beautifully that people from all around Shibuya Ward knew of Tokyo Metro High and its ume trees. The trees brought some esteem to the busy and crowded Ward and the residents were proud of them. And though Gregory preferred winter to the spring and summer, he was far from immune to the charms of the springtime ume blossoms or the more famous sakura flowering.

Gregory walked past the plum trees, discarding thoughts of spring and beautiful flowers, as he focused his thoughts on his domestic troubles. His wife, Karen, had been difficult and downright surly last night. Regrettably, he had no reason to believe her attitude would improve any time soon, Christmas tomorrow or no. He was not even sure what was wrong, though he also could not say what was right, if he was pressed.

He and Karen had been married for twenty years. They had raised a son, Mark, who was now twenty and in college, and who had chosen to remain in the States with Karen's parents when he was fifteen and Gregory and Karen had told him they intended to move to Japan. They had their sixteen-year-old daughter, Michelle, or Mishi, who they both loved very much and probably spoiled a bit. Especially Gregory, who certainly doted on the girl.

They had their separate careers, in which they were both successful. Gregory was very content with his position at the school as well as with the respect he had from his superiors. Karen had no complaints about the Red Cross office here in Shin Tokyo. She made more money than Gregory did and he knew she was an appreciated member of their executive team. He assumed Karen was happy about her job, though it had been quite some time since he had asked her about it.

It had been some time since he had asked her much of anything, now that he considered it. They lived together, raised their daughter, and worked at their jobs. They managed to be polite and even friendly to each other, usually. But that was about it. She had her pastimes and he had his. She certainly didn't want to spend evenings playing World of Guildwars III with him. And he had no interest in spending evenings watching the sort of melodrama television she liked.

He could not remember the last time they had sex. Six months ago? It certainly had not been more than twice in the last year.

Gregory supposed he still loved Karen, but it was not the passionate love of twenty years ago. It was not even the fond, appreciative, love of five years ago when she had supported his desire to move to Japan.

Gregory had never considered separating from Karen, in spite of the distance that existed between them. Why separate? They got along and they were able to live together. That was no easy thing, truth be known. Gregory understood and was able to tolerate Karen's prickly nature and she knew and was able to tolerate his quirks as well. That counted for a lot. Besides, he was forty years old. What would he be trying to prove, what would he be looking for, if he and Karen separated? Besides, divorce was out of the question. They might be casual Catholics but they _were_ still Catholic.

Engrossed in his troubled thoughts, Gregory slowly crossed the parking lot and approached his orange Jeep Wrangler, near the fence of the school's parking lot. He was so inwardly focused that he did not at first notice the beautiful blonde girl sitting on the hood of his Jeep, her shapely legs dangling over the fender, her black-boot-covered feet tapping against the chrome bumper.

He looked up with a start when she called out, "Gregory-kun! Let us go get coffee!"

Gregory face broke into a smile at the sight of his gorgeous little Sekirei and he waved at her, worry and trouble clearing away from his face and his thoughts straightaway.

"Sure, that sounds good, Mado-chan!"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory had chosen a Starbucks that was not directly "on the way" between Tokyo Metro High and the O'Donnell apartment, one in the trendy Harajuku district of Shibuya Ward, not even one hundred meters away as the crow flies from the Omotesandō avenue, Tokyo's Champs-Élysées. To say the Harajuku neighborhood of Shibuya Ward was trendy and swank was to engage in immense understatement.

The weather was reasonably pleasant and it had been a sunny afternoon, so Madoka suggested that they sit outside at one of the small, iron, patio tables that lined the front of the Starbucks. It was cool, but there was little in the way of a breeze, and sitting in the late sun with jackets on it was comfortable enough. This meant Gregory could indulge himself with a cigarette as well, while they were talking, which she knew he would appreciate.

"You're sure you aren't cold, Mado-chan? We can sit inside if you want." Gregory sipped his pumpkin spice latte carefully.

"I am fine, Gregory-kun, thank you. I have noticed that you enjoy being outside, with the cold air. Why is that?" Madoka tasted her peppermint mocha latte, purchased at Gregory's recommendation. Her eyebrows lifted upwards from her pleased surprise at how delicious the hot beverage was.

"Probably because the cold reminds me of home. New Hampshire is quite a bit colder than Shin Tokyo; this time of year back home in Manchester it is 22 degrees at night and it might only get up to 38 during the day. That's, ah… a low of -5 C and a high of… 3 C, I think." Gregory swirled his pumpkin spice latte in its cup, watching Madoka as she sipped carefully at her own drink. "Here in Shin Tokyo it only gets down to 38 degrees, or 3 C, at night and during the day it's around 53 degrees, or 12 C."

He grimaced then continued, "12 C might feel like a winter day to someone who has lived in Shin Tokyo for their whole life but to me it feels like the middle of April. So I'll take the cold air where I can."

Madoka laughed softly and shook her head, bemused. "I was going to say 17 and 36 sounds like a very _hot_ day. But the United States uses a different measuring system than we use, Fahrenheit, right? I am not very familiar with it even though I studied American English. It sounds complicated."

Gregory shrugged, turning his attention to the people walking past the Starbucks along the narrow cobblestone alley-backstreet the coffee shop fronted. "I'll tell you, Mado-chan, temperature measurement is probably the one thing I've had the most difficulty adjusting to, moving from the States rather 'unique' measurement standards to the metric system, here. It didn't take long before I was thinking in terms of kilometers instead of miles, liters instead of gallons. Even meters instead of feet was easy to adapt to. But for some reason saying '35 degrees' doesn't have the same impact to me that '95 degrees' has. Even after five years living here, summer days of 35 C just don't feel like summer days of 95. To be clear, the system Japan uses is probably better; it's just not what I grew up with."

Watching Gregory as he spoke, Madoka took another sip of her hot drink. She loved the flavor and made a point to remember what Gregory had ordered for her. She looked around at the sparsely trafficked foot-traffic-only alley-backstreet and at the otherwise empty Starbucks patio, then asked, "So, Gregory-kun, do you think it is safe to talk about, you know, the other stuff, here?"

He nodded. "Yeah, it should be. I left my phone in the Jeep on purpose, so neither of us is carrying anything they can easily monitor. If they can spy on a conversation in an outdoor café that we picked on the spur of the moment then they have enough intelligence assets in place that it simply isn't reasonable that we'd _ever_ avoid them. So we'll not worry about whether that's the case or not. There is a point of diminishing returns on paranoia; I hope to keep us on the smart side of that point, but if you ever wonder if something we're doing is effective, or if it seems overly cautious, let me know. I need a sanity check on my thought processes as much as anyone else does."

Madoka replied, "I do not know anything about any of this though. If you think something is necessary then I am sure it is, Gregory-kun."

Gregory took another sip of coffee then shook his head, "No, no, you shouldn't think like that, Mado-chan. You're smart _and_ you have a completely different viewpoint than I do, so there's value in that. Just because I know more about certain things doesn't mean your opinion or guesses or instincts are invalid or worse than mine are. If you have a question or if you think something isn't a good idea, or if you have an idea you want to share, you make sure to speak up, okay? I might not always agree but I promise I will always listen."

Madoka gave Gregory a happy smile at this. Gregory wasted a half second wondering why Madoka thought she should be seen but not heard, then reminded himself that she was raised in Japan and from hints he'd gotten she'd been raised with an even more skewed, traditionalist, view of women than was common. And given how poorly women were viewed, in attitude if not in deed, by typical Japanese males, that was saying something.

"Tell me more about the MBI Sekirei Labs, Mado-chan. Your earliest memories are there? Even as a small child you were in a group dormitory with other Sekirei? You had no mother or father in your life, even then?"

Madoka shook her head, "No, no parents. I never met another Sekirei who said they had been raised by any kind of parent. I remember just the crèche when we were very small, and then we were moved to the dorms when we were, as best that I can guess, the same as a five year old child. To the best of our ability to tell, the story of us being found as embryos and fetuses in suspension tanks in our ship on Kamakura Island is the truth. At least, none of us ever found any suspicious memories of being kidnapped from our human families or something like that, and it did get spoken of between the Sekirei, when we felt we had some privacy away from the eyes and ears of the Administrators."

Gregory had taken the black wire-bound Notebook (as Madoka was already thinking of it, The Notebook, capital letters and all) out of his jacket pocket and was making notes. "And you don't have any idea of how many years you were there? The earliest you could have been born would be, what… 2000? Hiroto Minaka and his 'minions' discovered the ship in 1999, they found 107 embryos and one fully grown adult Sekirei, right?"

"Yes, the adult one was number 01. She was the one responsible for the rest of us, according to the stories Yosu and I heard when we were little. I think… I think it was 02 Matsu who told us and the other little ones in Group 11 the story first. I do not remember exactly, it _was_ a long time ago. When we were small and if there was something that scared us we would hope 01 would come save us from the MBI people." Madoka looked off into the distance, continuing, "I do not know what it is like for children like Mishi but we spent a lot of our time very scared. I remember being terrified almost all of the time when I was small. There were scary scientists who did experiments on us and made us take off our clothes all the time and they would drag a Sekirei out of the dorms kicking and screaming for tests if the Sekirei tried to resist. Looking back from my perspective today I realize they were probably not _deliberately_ trying to scare us but they also made no effort to make us feel safe or secure. If they wanted to draw blood for tests they just came in and took blood from us. There were no words of comfort or explanations to make us understand why it was needed. I do not think the MBI people hated us, I think they just did not care about us as people. We were treated like animals more than people, when I consider it now. Maybe that made it easier for them. I do not know."

Gregory looked at Madoka's pensive expression and frowned. He said, "I really can't imagine what that was like. I doubt very many of your fellow Sekirei came out of such an upbringing with what we would call a healthy mind. No, I'm not saying you are all crazy," _You are not saying we are all sane, either,_ the thought came to her, "It's just… it takes a certain amount of care and nurturing to raise a child to be a healthy, well adjusted, adult. And it sounds like there wasn't much effort made in doing that with the Sekirei."

Madoka gave Gregory a small smile and nodded agreement. "There was _no_ nurturing that I ever recognized as such. Maybe Group 11 was the group that received no care and other Groups did? I do not know. But we _were_ scared a lot, me and Yosu-chan. And some of the other girls, like Katsuragi, they were scared a lot too. They came and went, so you never knew how long someone would be in Group 11. Katsuragi was with us for what was probably a month when we were all the size of the children in the 3rd grade photos you showed me."

"Yeah, about eight or nine years old. I'm glad that school yearbook I gave you is helping. Even if you aren't _sure_ how old you were you at various times in your youth, you can at least guess at it based on what your peers looked like compared to the kids in the school yearbooks."

Madoka nodded. "Yes, that has turned out to be a very good idea, Gregory-kun, thank you. I have now mostly associated ages with my different memories of being a child. It is very helpful. I had no realization how disorienting it was not having any idea how old I was, growing up."

"I doubt that was by accident," Gregory mumbled, as he continued making notes. He spoke up, asking, "Were there other things that scared you and your friends? Or was it just being taken away?"

"Yes there were many things we were afraid of, all of the time. Not only the Researchers and Administrators, though they were scary enough. There were also the older Sekirei, the First Five, we called them. Sekirei 02 through 05, but never 01 in spite of the name 'First Five'. They were scarier than the MBI staff in some ways. They had the freedom to come and go from our dorms, none of us knew where they slept or where they spent the rest of their time, but they definitely had more freedom than we did."

Madoka thought back to her childhood as best she could, her eyes growing distant and her coffee forgotten in her hand. "We would see 02 Matsu working with the Researchers, taking notes or helping them with their experiments. She was one we were all scared of, even though she would sometimes tell us things no one else would share with us, like the story of where we came from, the spaceship, and Kamakura Island. Then there was 04 Karasuba, the black crow, everyone was scared of her, even the bigger girls like 14 Chiyo, who were never scared of the Researchers, or at least pretended to not be scared of them." Madoka visibly shuddered. "If 04 was around, either in the labs we were being tested in or around the Group 11 dorms, everyone kept quiet and made sure to not raise a fuss about anything at all."

Madoka tried to get a grip on herself, the remnants of old childhood fears having sent gooseflesh all over her arms. She continued, "Any time we saw 05 Mutsu he was this towering giant male and just being male and Sekirei made him very strange, and so made him unknown and unpredictable. And he would stare at us, all silent and foreboding. He scowled at us like we offended him somehow, just by being there. And since he was the only grown male Sekirei we ever saw and he was, like, over two meters tall, yes, we were scared of him. We told scary stories about all of them, really. Even 03, who was nice a lot of the time and acted like everyone's onee-san. But everyone in Group 11 knew that she would sell you out to the Administrators if you trusted her with too much, because she was always trying to impress the Professor. Only 10 Uzume ever really trusted her. Well, 10 Uzume and 67 Riko."

Madoka's eyes focused on her Ashikabi, who was carefully making notes still. "But 67 Riko was only in Group 11 after at least half of us had been through our Puberty Adjustments, so probably 4 years total? Maybe 3? It is very hard to guess at the passage of time during those years. But 67 Riko was an odd, anti-social, Sekirei who no one got along with, so her friendship with 03 was written off as just another one of her quirks. No one ever had any sort of relationships with the other First Five."

"None of you ever saw this 01 Sekirei, Mado-chan? Are you sure she was real, then?"

Madoka thought about the question while sipping her coffee. After a minute she replied, "I guess we could not be _sure_ , since none of us in Group 11 ever actually saw her. But we all knew she was real even when we were very young, when we were toddlers in the crèche, my earliest memories. And it would be very odd for numbering to start at 02, yes?"

Gregory laughed, "Well, that's true. You said your earliest memories were when you were a toddler, in the crèche? The, ah, nursery? So you would be about, what, 3?"

"Yes, in the crèche we were all about the same size as three year old children, so that's my best guess. Then my next memories were at about five years old, in the Group 11 dorms. So there was some Adjustment between us being toddlers in the crèche and then being young children in the new Group 11 dorms."

Gregory's ink pen was furiously scratching in The Notebook and he was muttering in English. Madoka smiled at how interested Gregory was in these seemingly irrelevant details of her life. It was actually a good feeling that her Ashikabi was so interested in her; she had been raised to expect males to be interested in themselves and that she should focus on them instead of on her own life. Gregory was not what she had been raised to expect in an Ashikabi, in many ways.

Without looking up, he asked, "Were there any clues about what happened to 01?"

Madoka shook her head. "No. She was just not there. And any questions we asked were firmly discouraged. I had the feeling that the First Five knew where she was, but… I never had the courage to ask any of them. The Group 11 girls all had different ideas about her though. Some of us believed that she had been captured by MBI and was being held prisoner so that she could not save us from the Researchers. Others insisted she had been killed or even that she was secretly working with MBI."

Gregory looked up and met her eyes across the patio table. "What do you believe, Mado-chan?"

She looked down at her hands, her hair falling forward and hiding her eyes from Gregory's view. She answered, in a low voice, "I believed she was trying to get free from MBI, so she could find us, and save us. I still do. But, you know, it is getting to the time when maybe some of us cannot be saved anymore. Some, like 08 and 07 cannot be saved now. And some like 86 Katsuragi and Toyotama-onee-sama, it might be too late for them now too."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

The last light of the day quickly disappearing, Gregory finished making a note to follow up about 07 and 08, as well as the honorific applied to Toyotama's name. His thoughts centered on this Sekirei 01 who no one ever knew or saw. Gregory wondered at how universal it was for people, Terran Human or Sekirei, to have faith in an unseen, absent, savior, who they believed would return some day and save them from torment.

He also wondered what the real story behind Sekirei 01 was. It was entirely likely, even probable, that this fully adult, likely-entirely-trained in the use of her Sekirei powers, protector and custodian of the 107 unborn Sekirei, would have been quickly and quietly eliminated by anyone who had their own plans for the Sekirei ship and its living cargo.

It surely was damn well unlikely a lunatic like Hiroto Minaka (or his "minions") could convince the protector Sekirei to cooperate with his lunatic plans.

His own Sekirei was already visibly upset due to the subject so it was time to change it. He would come back to the question of 01, the First Five Sekirei, and details of Group 11 at another time.

"Well, Mado-chan, now that you are out and about in the city, free from MBI at least somewhat, you get to do new things. The first new thing on the list is that tomorrow is Christmas and that means Mishi and I got you a Christmas present. You said they celebrated no such holidays in the dorms, so Merry Christmas. We also figured it was better to give it to you today than tomorrow, so Karen doesn't get all bent out of shape about it."

"Why would she do that, Gregory-kun?"

Gregory shook his head as he stood up from the café table and threw away his empty coffee cup, "Who knows? Better to avoid the problem at all. Mishi and I got you a new phone just for your own use. I know you've been to borrowing Mishi's tablet to do any reading at the apartment, but with the phone you can access the web without any restrictions and you can save any websites you want to read later as well as text and video and voice. I'll show you how to use it, come on, it's in the Jeep. Let's get home, it's getting dark out here."

The happy expression on his Sekirei's face brought out a cheerful smile from Gregory as they made to leave the café. Madoka wrapped her hand around Gregory's arm and walked closely beside him as they walked down the narrow, cobbled, backstreet-alley, towards the pay-lot where they had parked the Jeep.

Gregory realized he liked her being close. He liked it quite a lot.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

"Mado! So do you like the phone?" Mishi asked, flopping onto the bed next to her new blonde roommate.

Mishi was dressed up for Midnight Mass, which all three O'Donnell's were attending. Madoka had begged off; even though she had found the one Sunday service she had attended interesting, she did not feel like spending time in a vehicle with Karen O'Donnell. Madoka's decision to not join them had frustrated Mishi; the teenager liked going out in public with Madoka because then everyone paid attention to them, wherever they went.

"Do you have any questions about it? It's the same kind I use, the new Samsung. It's awesome, you'll love it! I couldn't believe it when Dad said you didn't have a phone, I thought yours must have been stolen with your ID but he said you didn't have one even before!"

Giving Mishi a slight smile, Madoka nodded, "It is true; I did not have a phone before. I never needed one in the small town I grew up in. But I do very much like this one, Mishi. Thank you very much for helping Gregory pick it out for me."

Mishi watched Madoka's face as the pretty blonde answered, trying to figure out why the response did not satisfy her. For days now there was something about the way Madoka talked to her, answered her questions, interacted with her, which was just… off. _Something_ had changed from last week when they were happily watching lesbian erotica together and now. Now, when every signal Mishi received from the gorgeous girl sharing her bed was… friendly? Friendly but… distant?

Friendly! Like Mishi had been put in the "Friend Zone"!

" _Oh my god, that's what's happened! I've been friend zoned! Oh my god!"_ Mishi gaped, her eyes almost bugging out and her mouth hanging open, shocked to the core at the epiphany she'd just had. _"So this is what that feels like? This sucks!"_

Quickly schooling her features back to some semblance of normality, Mishi asked, "So, what are you reading about, Mado?" She needed to probe for more information. If she had been friend zoned, _"Oh my god, this sucks! I've never been the one put in the friend zone!",_ then she _had_ to find out why.

"I was reading the Wikipedia page about New Hampshire. Gregory mentioned that was where he was from and I was curious about it." Madoka held up the phone so Mishi could see the distinctive color scheme of Wikipedia's article pages.

Mishi looked at the phone then stared at Madoka. The blonde girl looked uncomfortable and asked, "What?"

Glancing at the bedroom door to make sure it was shut and no one was likely to be listening, Mishi scooted closer to Madoka and whispered, "Really, Mado? You have to ask what? Come on, what's going on with you and my Dad? Could you be any more obvious? Jesus Christ On A Bicycle, a person would have to be blind to miss the way you look at him lately and the way you talk to him, and here you are spending Christmas Eve just casually reading about New Hampshire? Just because Dad mentioned we're from there and that makes it so interesting that you had to look it up and read about it? Come on!"

Mishi could see Madoka withdrawing into herself, hunching up her shoulders defensively, but Mishi didn't care. She had to know what was going on! There _had_ to be something going on between her Dad and Madoka, or, or, at _least_ Madoka was suddenly interested in her Dad. And that didn't make any sense at all!

"Gregory is a decent and kind man. Why would I not be curious about where he is from? Why would that be a big deal?" Madoka responded to Mishi's whispered interrogation, reluctantly.

Rolling her eyes, Mishi pressed, "Mado, just the other night you were describing Dad as 'old' and 'creepy' and 'gross' and now you've been practically flirting with him and don't think I haven't seen how you reach out to touch his arm now and then and how you smile at him. _Come on_ , it's not like I'm going to go tell my Mom or something, but you should tell me if you've got a thing for my Dad!"

Before Madoka could answer, there was a light tapping on the bedroom door. "Hey," Gregory's voice was muffled by the closed door, "I'm going to grab a shower, anyone need the bathroom first?"

"No, Gregory, thank you."

"No, Dad, I'm good, thanks."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka let the silence grow after she and Mishi heard the hall bathroom door close and lock. She did not like that Mishi seemed to know that something had changed between Gregory and herself, but Madoka did not know what to do about it, either. Denying everything seemed the best course, but Mishi was not letting it go. She took after her father way too much in that regard!

"Come on Mado. Level with me, what's going on? _I like you_ , I consider you a friend, I really do. I _promise_ I won't tell _anyone_."

Looking at Mishi as the sixteen-year-old girl spoke so earnestly Madoka felt herself wavering. She was tempted to tell her the truth. After all, if 86 Katsuragi had not spotted her and Gregory from the middle of the street Thursday night, then Mishi could very well be her Ashikabi now and know the truth. Plus, having a girlfriend to talk to about everything would be such a relief for Madoka.

On the other hand… the five days since Gregory O'Donnell had become her Ashikabi had given Madoka an opportunity to see not only Gregory in a new light but Mishi as well.

Gregory's daughter was sweet, she was smart, and she was cute, but she was also shallow and vain. She was more than a bit of a drama queen, loving gossip and having no compunctions about shading her perceptions of events towards the most-drama-producing end. It might have been _fun_ to have Mishi as her Ashikabi, but it also would have been very _dangerous_. Not just for Madoka, but for _Mishi_.

After less than a week of being in Gregory's confidence, of him speaking to her as an equal, of being a part of how he looked at the world, Madoka realized that she was very fortunate it had been Gregory who had kissed her, _"So amazingly well",_ last Thursday night.

Old guy or not.

"I do not know, Mishi. What do you want me to say? That maybe I see Gregory differently now than I did a week ago?" Madoka sat her phone down and pulled herself up on the bed to sit with her back against the headboard and her knees pulled up in front of her. "But, Mishi, nothing is going on like you seem to suspect. I just think Gregory is a person with things about him that are not obvious at first glance; there is more to him than…than… um, than… ahhhhhh? Mmmmm! Oh, _fuck_ _yeah_ …"

"Mado?" Mishi blinked so hard it was almost audible and her eyebrows shot up her forehead. "Say again?"

 _{Madoka felt the hot water from the shower pelting her shoulders and head as she held herself away from the wall with one hand against the tile. She was looking down, water dripping from her nose and chin, looking at the blonde girl kneeling between her feet, thick wet hair pulled back away from the girls face and gripped in Madoka's other hand. The girl was so beautiful! Madoka had never imagined someone so desirable, had never felt anything like the overwhelming lust and hunger that filled her entire awareness from just looking at this girl who was kneeling, naked, before Madoka. The girl was stroking and sucking as hard as she could, happily if the pleased moans from the girl were any indication, on Madoka's rock hard erection…_}

"Wait, what? Unh! AHHH!"

{ _Madoka felt muscles in her lower abdomen and her butt tensing and then strange muscles between her legs_ _squeezed_ _, clenching so hard that it was almost painful. Then an intense shock of pleasure came along with the squeezing! The feeling was beyond anything she had ever imagined possible for her body to produce, she could only shudder and thrust her hips forward, pushing herself deeper into the girl's hot, wet, mouth, the overwhelming need to push deeper and thrust harder were the only thoughts that could exist alongside the pulsing ecstasy._ }

"UNNNNNH! Yessss, suck it!"

"Whatthefuck? Mado? Whatthefuck?" Mishi's startled exclamation barely registered with Madoka; she could barely feel Mishi's hands desperately holding down on Madoka's mouth, stifling her screams of…

"Mmmmmpph!"

{ _Another explosion of pleasure, and another, each spasm accompanied by a_ _squeezing_ _in her groin and a_ _gush_ _into the eager mouth of that divine girl, that beauty on her knees and wrapping her arms around Madoka's hips. She insistently pulled Madoka's lower abdomen flush against her lips, completely swallowing her…_ }

"Mphhh! AMH-hm-hm! EAaafff! Fffummmk mmma pamph!"

"Jesus Christ, Mado, hush! And... suck your what?!" Atop Madoka's thrusting hips and arching back, Mishi's petite body was in danger of being launched completely off the bed as she tried to hold her blonde roomie down while keeping her hands over the other girl's mouth to muffle her shouts.

{ _After what seemed an eternity of pleasure and lust, which had each burned the other as fuel for a bonfire that was surely destroying her entire body, Madoka felt the slow return of sanity, along with a tremor in her legs; legs which were now a bit weak in the knees. She looked through barely open eyes down at the angelic girl who was still lovingly stroking the length of Madoka's rapidly shrinking penis…_}

Madoka's eyes opened wide, panic and fear zinging across her nervous system, competing with the remnants of the most powerful, and frightening, orgasm she had ever experienced. " _Whaaaaaaa?_ _My rapidly shrinking what?!"_

Madoka realized she was still lying on Mishi's bed but her head was hanging off the edge, with Mishi straddling her torso and holding her hands over Madoka's mouth. Madoka's wide blue eyes stared up at Mishi, terribly confused and alarmed.

It didn't look as though Mishi would have any answers, since her eyes were bugging out in shock. The younger girl's expression was a mix of confusion, alarm, and some embarrassment as well, as she watched Madoka for signs that the blonde girl was done with the… fit… she had been in for the last thirty seconds or so.

"Mado?"

Madoka pulled Mishi's hands away from her mouth and rolled over onto her side, almost pushing Mishi off the bed, again. Madoka lay facing away from the teenage girl, gasping for air, her own hands covering her mouth. It seemed as though she could not catch her breath and for some reason she felt an almost overwhelming urge to cry.

"Mado, are you… okay?" Mishi sat next to her friend, her voice tentative, the confusion she was feeling quite clear.

Still panting for breath, Madoka swiped her now-sweaty hair out of her eyes and turned her head to look helplessly at the teenage girl. "No, I am not okay! Do I look okay?"

"Do you want me to get someone?" Mishi's expression said clearly she did not have any idea who that someone might be, but she had to at least offer to do something.

"Oh god no! I mean, oh… Mishi… I am sorry. No, I just… need to get some air. I will be back in a minute."

Madoka stood on shaky legs and made her way to the apartment patio door as quickly as she could. If she ran into Gregory, or worse, Karen, in the hallway before she could get outside she would probably die of embarrassment.

By the time she pulled the patio door closed behind her, that oddly insistent impulse to start crying overcame her self-control. The night air was cold, especially in just a thin tank top and her very wet barely-there-shorts, but it did help clear away the remnants of the fire that had burned her body and her mind so viciously, so delightfully.

Madoka sat on one of the patio chairs and pulled her legs up and hugged them to her chest, then gave into the emotional storm that demanded release, sobs shaking her shoulders.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory stood in his best slacks and a soft cotton undershirt, his damp shower towel draped over a shoulder, in the doorway to Mishi's bedroom. "Where's Mado?"

Mishi was sitting in the middle of her large bed, in her church-dress clothes, with the blankets all messed up around her, looking blankly back at Gregory as though she didn't recognize who he was for a moment, before replying, "She, ah, she stepped out for a minute. She said she needed some air."

Gregory started to turn and go to the patio when his daughter's voice stopped him.

"No, Dad, she said she wanted to be alone to think, so, you know, she's fine. She just needed a minute alone. Really."

Looking back at Mishi, Gregory got the definite feeling he was missing something here. But he had learned from the hard experience of being a father that he really did not need to know _everything_ that went on in his home. He was proud of learning that lesson, since almost every other father he knew completely _failed_ to understand this important fact of life, clinging to some delusion that they had to be in control and in charge of everything that happened in their homes.

Idiots, the lot of them.

Regardless of the feeling that he had in the back of his head, where he had never had any sort of detectable feelings before, which told him Madoka was near, though under some emotional turmoil, he still felt uneasy. But, he made himself take his daughters word for the situation. Mishi deserved that much respect from him, a fact which made him glow with pride at the young woman his little girl was growing up to be.

"Okay. Well, we'll be leaving for Midnight Mass in about 15 minutes."

"Great, okay, thanks Dad." Mishi smiled at him, relieved he was listening to her.

But he did try to "keep an ear" on his feeling about Madoka in case it changed for the worse.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

By the time the O'Donnell's had left the apartment, Madoka had mostly regained control of her emotions. She had even been able to reassure Gregory that there was no problem when he came to the patio door to check on her, just before leaving for their religious thing.

She did not think Gregory believed her insistence that she was fine, but he didn't argue it. He did advise against staying out in the December night air while wearing what she was barely wearing and he wished her goodnight before he shut the patio door.

Madoka heard Karen slam the front door of the apartment as she departed. Spending much effort figuring out why just did not interest the Sekirei, though.

After they were gone, Madoka sat and focused on calming down. The cold air cleared her head significantly and now she had privacy and silence, so she could think and consider what had just happened in Mishi's bedroom. Madoka replayed her memory of the incident, then filtered out the overwhelming physical sensations, put aside the emotional content and the… alien… urges that had made her want to do nothing more than _push_ and _thrust_ and go _deeper_ … she separated all of that out and isolated just the visual-fantasy information. _Then_ she was able to scrutinize what she'd seen. She recognized the shower in the hallway bathroom, which shared a wall with Mishi's bedroom. And she now recognized the blonde girl who had been so enthusiastically and expertly… servicing… her.

No, that girl had not been doing it to _her_ ; she'd been doing it to _Gregory_.

She understood now that what she had experienced in Mishi's bedroom had come through the bond with her Ashikabi. She had been living _Gregory's_ experience. He had been in the shower in the room next to the bedroom, and he must have been… relieving… himself, and Madoka caught at least the… _end_ of it. She had not only felt what he had been feeling but she had seen the fantasy his imagination had conjured for him and she had experienced his emotions… And he had been _fantasizing_ about _her_!

Madoka saw that face every day in the mirror. But that wasn't what she looked like! Well, it _was_ what she looked like, but it wasn't what Madoka saw when she looked at her face, which was why it took her so long to understand what she'd been seeing.

Was that what she looked like to Gregory, then? When he looked at her? Was she that beautiful to his eyes? Did he feel that _alarming_ degree of adoration and lust when he looked at her? No, not possible, he could not! Living like that would drive someone insane. No one could be so helplessly, intolerably, drawn to touch, to kiss, to feel, to _taste_ , another like that without going crazy!

Madoka closed her eyes and lost herself in thinking about the exquisiteness and perfection of _that girl's_ face. Remembering what it had felt like to look down at _that girl's_ large soap-slick breasts and the flawless curve of her ass as she knelt between Madoka's feet and…

 _No_ , it was just too much, _far_ too much. She was momentarily tempted to tear off her clothes just so she could see _that girl's_ body again. But she _knew_ she wouldn't see it the same way now, wouldn't see what Gregory saw.

She hugged her knees to her chest and tried to remember her relationships in the MBI Sekirei Labs, to try to compare what she had seen through her Ashikabi's eyes tonight with what she had seen and felt with the other girls in Group 11.

Madoka had been 16 Toyotama's lover for quite a while, in the MBI Sekirei Labs. What Madoka now figured must have been more than a year. It was difficult to judge the post-puberty time in the Labs since everyone in Group 11 had been caught up to the same physical age so they weren't different sizes anymore. A few months after her Puberty Adjustment, she and Toyotama struck up the relationship that they continued until just recently, when Madoka was removed from the Group 11 Dorms for her final Adjustments, followed by several months of isolation from all the other Sekirei, then release into the city.

When Madoka had come out of her Puberty Adjustment her best friend 44 Yosuga had been away on another adjustment to fix her headaches, one that had taken Yosuga away for weeks. It seemed there were many weeks-long Adjustments for Yosuga then. During that difficult time, in the absence of her lifelong companion and with a new body which brought a great deal of uncomfortable attention to her, Madoka found that she needed a protector from some of the other girls, the ones who were prone to picking on the defenseless, pretty, blonde, Sekirei. They would pick on _and_ push for physical intimacies that Madoka wasn't really ready for, no matter her sudden physiological age.

Other Group 11 girls. Like 14 Chiyo, who was one of the first Group 11 girls to have been through Puberty Adjustment, probably three years before Madoka's own, at Madoka's now-best-guess. Chiyo, who had grown very comfortable with her strong, muscular, body and the appetites it seemed to have come with. Ferocious 14, who had never lost a fight or spar to anyone in Group 11, going back to when they were all just barely older than toddlers.

There was also tall, slender, boyish, and strong-willed, 85 Oshino. Who had never let her hair grow long enough to be mistaken for a girl even before her Puberty Adjustment. Dark-eyed and clever Oshino, who used guile and flattery as well as a precise understanding of social standing and social _weaknesses_ to get what _she_ wanted. Oshino had played on her own general resemblance to 44 Yosuga's post-puberty physique to tempt Madoka into being her play-toy. But no matter how much Madoka missed Yosuga in those long weeks where her best friend was gone on endless Adjustments, 85 Oshino held no appeal. Madoka had seen how faithless 85 had been to her previous playthings and rejected her overtures. Not that Oshino was willing to take "no" for an answer.

Chiyo and Oshino, both of whom Toyotama-onee-sama dealt with, firmly, once number 16 had been adequately motivated.

Toyotama had been the best of Madoka's options. Of the almost twenty Sekirei in Group 11 (there were times where there were more, times when there were less, but at that point there were around twenty Group 11 residents), many were not interested in girls in a sexual way. At least not interested in more than isolated experiments or flings, and that wasn't what Madoka needed. Of those who were known to Madoka to have a sustained interest in females and who were mostly decent and kind and had not been prone to cruelty and bullying, there was 10 Uzume, 16 Toyotama, 18 Ichiya, 40 Shi, and 54 Kuruse. Madoka chose Toyotama. She was strong, she was confident, and she was very highly rated on the Badass Scale.

Madoka used affection, intimacy, and eventually sex itself to make sure her Toyotama-onee-sama was properly motivated and fully committed to protecting her. The small, blonde, Sekirei had no useful powers and couldn't match even the next weakest Sekirei in any sort of sparring contest or fight. Being Toyotama-onee-sama's "little sister" and lover gave Madoka more control over her own fate than she'd thought she would ever have.

And Madoka had picked Toyotama because she saw the same look in Toyotama's eyes that she'd seen in many of the male lab techs. The lab techs were younger, by and large, than the Administrators and Researchers, and as such their contact with the Sekirei was more carefully monitored and limited by the MBI Sekirei Labs Administration. This did not keep the lab techs from getting plenty of chances for leering at the skimpily dressed, nubile, beauties that MBI had captive. Madoka had never _really_ understood what those looks meant. She called it "desire" but her _own_ desires and her own appreciation for the beauty of her lover Toyotama and, indeed, all of the other girls in Group 11, was so different, so much milder, from what was hinted at in that… hungry… _scary_ … look.

It turned out that 16 Toyotama had a deeply buried desire for pretty little things. An appetite Madoka helped Toyotama realize and Madoka had encouraged.

It took some effort and most of that was in learning how to best use the new tools her Puberty Adjustment had given her. But eventually Madoka had her way. She had turned 16 Toyotama, who'd been indifferent to the child Madoka, into the one person no one in Group 11 would cross when it came to Toyotama's "little sister".

Toyotama had been an eager lover, once she had been convinced it was okay to do what she wanted with Madoka's body and that Madoka would do whatever Toyotama wanted in return. Getting Toyotama to cross lines she could not easily step back over had taken time and effort but it had been worth it.

Madoka had even agreed to Toyotama-onee-sama sharing her with her best friend, 18 Ichiya, on several occasions. Doing so further committed Toyotama and it made Ichi-chan glad to watch out for Madoka too, even if not so devotedly as Toyotama. Ichi-chan had her own amusements and her own occasional pillow friends among the other girls, but she had never had the drive that Madoka sensed in number 16, did not have that same burning hunger for pretty little things. But the three of them had their fun, absolutely. Madoka had found both of the strong, older, girls attractive and sexy. She had very much enjoyed what it felt like to be wanted by both of them. But she had never felt _lust_ for them.

After the revelations of tonight, Madoka doubted she had ever previously experienced lust at all.

Madoka both regretted _and_ was glad that when 44 Yosuga was finally free of the headaches that had plagued her since her Puberty Adjustment that Yosu-chan had little interest in the pastimes Madoka and her big sister/lover enjoyed. Yosu-chan was still Madoka's best friend, they usually slept in the same dorm room and often the same bed (the cot-style beds in the dorms weren't nearly wide enough to allow Madoka to comfortably _sleep_ with Toyotama) but Yosuga never quite understood the appeal of slippery body parts going bump over and over. It had bothered Yosuga that she couldn't be a part of that with Madoka, but Madoka had secretly felt that this odd lack on Yosuga's part had probably preserved their friendship through the turbulent and violent adolescence all the Sekirei seemed to experience, and it kept their relationship from becoming something… trivial.

Trivial, like how Madoka had ultimately felt about Toyotama. There was good reason why it was Yosuga and Madoka who had actually planned how to meet up after they were released into the city, and not Toyotama and Madoka.

But in all the experimenting and playing and sweaty lovemaking, Madoka had never felt anything like tonight… not even close! You could not even call the "clouds and the rain" Madoka had managed with Toyotama or Ichi-chan to be the same sort of thing as what she had caught through the bond, tonight, from Gregory. That was no "clouds and rain", that was a tsunami, a typhoon!

Madoka had never appreciated that someone could feel the lust she had felt when looking down at _that girl_ while her eager mouth wrapped so…

What happened tonight had scared her. To lose control of herself, to have something pleasurable be _inflicted_ on her, to have that kind of lust, and the mind numbing ecstasy that followed, hammered into her mind and her body? If she hadn't immediately realized that it had happened by accident, that Gregory had no awareness of what she had experienced, she would have been furious with him. Instead, she could not blame Gregory at all, and accepted that it had been just one of those things no one knew could happen between a Sekirei and their Ashikabi.

Right now Madoka was not sure if she was dreading, or looking forward to, the next time it happened.

Because, terrifying loss of control or not, it was _narcotic_ looking at _that girl's_ face, it was thrilling even thinking of touching her, thinking about _tasting_ her…

Madoka shivered in the cold night air, suddenly and depressingly reminded that she was still sitting outside on the O'Donnell's patio, almost naked, and that the temperature was almost freezing. And that her pants were extremely soaked though. Again. And cold. Very very cold.

It was past time to go inside, get a hot shower, change clothes, and try to get some sleep.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 _ **Sekirei**_ –

 _ **The First Five**_ – The Sekirei of Group 11 referred to the "grown" Sekirei which they knew of (Sekirei 01 through 05) as the First Five. Group 11 had no contact with 01, but they did see the other members of the First Five over the years. (See below: MBI Sekirei Labs - Sekirei Ages)

 **01 (No Name)** – Madoka claims that the only adult in the ship was numbered 01 and was the Sekirei responsible for caring for the 107 unborn who were in the ship. Madoka never saw 01 nor did she ever meet anyone who claimed to have met 01, though it was strongly implied that 02 Matsu had.  
This Sekirei took on a mythological status among the younger Sekirei, especially given the fearful and lonely lives they lived as children.  
The MBI Researchers, Administrators, and the older Sekirei themselves, forbade any questions from the Group 11 Sekirei concerning any non-Group 11 Sekirei. Madoka says it was popularly considered that this rule existed only because they didn't want anyone asking about 01. A rule forbidding any non-Group 11 queries solved any problem MBI's staff might have had with keeping their stories straight, as well as preventing proof of Sekirei 01 by inference.  
Madoka believes that 01 is out there, trying to get free from MBI so that she can rescue the 107 Sekirei upon who MBI has visited so much wrong. I find myself skeptical, but I am also reluctant to disabuse Madoka of a faith that has brought her at least some comfort in what has been a remarkably dark and difficult life so far.  
If this Sekirei is truly still alive, I hope for Madoka's sake she is truly a prisoner of MBI or that Madoka never finds out otherwise. What trauma would it be for me, a stable adult, to discover the Christ of my faith was not only real but had sold out to the Devil instead of sacrificing himself for us?  
As difficult as that would be to imagine, the reaction in the Sekirei who had faith in 01 would be far more extreme.  
I truly do hope their faith is never proven wrong. Let this 01 be dead and long dissected in MBI's Labs, for the sake of all these poor girls.

 **02 Matsu** – Red hair, glasses, a 'brain type', she was known to not having any combat abilities, much like 22 Kochou and 37 Madoka. Reported to have been a mature adult at the same time Madoka remembers herself and her Group 11 peers being approximately five years old, physiologically. The last time Madoka saw 02 Matsu was just over a year and a half before Phase One started and Madoka considered 02 Matsu to have not aged particularly noticeably, other than perhaps being more curvy and endowed than she had been when Madoka first saw her.  
02 helped the MBI scientists in their work with the Sekirei, this much is clear. How much of this cooperation was actual _collaboration_ and how much of it was motivated by seeking _harm reduction_ is impossible to tell. She _was_ the only person to make any effort to educate the younger Sekirei about their origins, according to Madoka.  
According to the rumors in Group 11, 02 disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs several months before Madoka was separated from Group 11 into her own final adjustments (approx. October 2019), before the Sekirei Plan launched. If 02 parted ways with MBI at that point, it would have been sometime around July 2019.

 **03 Kazehana** – Black hair, beautiful face and figure, she was reputed to be the most powerful of the Sekirei other than the mysterious 01. She was known to be fixated on the President of MBI, Hiroto Minaka, and constantly courting his attention. This well-known attraction 03 had for Hiroto Minaka compromised her in the view of most of the Group 11 Sekirei, even though 03 seems to have made efforts over the years at endearing herself to the younger Sekirei, playing up a "big sister" role with them on the occasions she spent time in the Group 11 dorms. The younger Sekirei believed (for good reason or not it is impossible to tell at this stage) that 03 would betray them to Minaka if doing so would put her in his good graces.  
Only 10 Uzume and 67 Riko were trusting of 03 Kazehana, among the Group 11 Sekirei.  
Like 02 Matsu, 03 seems to have disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs before the Sekirei Plan began. The last time she was seen by anyone in Group 11 was, best guess, sometime in mid-2017, a bit over two years before Phase One of the Sekirei Plan began. Given the rules which forbade questions about any non-Group 11 Sekirei only rumors followed 03's disappearance.

 **04 Karasuba** – Grey-silver hair, slender, a katana always in her belt. She carried a distinct aura of menace around her, which impressed all of the Group 11 Sekirei into avoiding the "Black Crow" as much as possible. 04 seems to have had very little interaction with Group 11, at least from Madoka's point of view.

 **05 Mutsu** – The only male Sekirei in the "older" group. Mutsu carried a Japanese sword at all times. He also has grey-silver hair and a general facial similarity to 04 Karasuba. Madoka reports that rumor had it 04 and 05 were twins.  
Mutsu is very tall, two meters at least, broad of shoulder, and likely a powerful physical presence. He was a forbidding and unfriendly figure to the younger Sekirei of Group 11. They all felt as though 05 Mutsu did not like any of them, and as though he were offended by their very existence.  
Madoka says he disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs long before any of the others in the First Five group.

 _ **MBI Sekirei Labs**_ –

 **The Sekirei's ages** – There is a noticeable problem with the ages of the Sekirei compared to the earliest they could have been born (no earlier than 1999).

Madoka says none of the Sekirei that she spoke to recalled any life before the labs. Given that Madoka remembers from about the age of three (toddlers) living in what were called "crèches" instead of the later residence in "Dorms" (and note that Terran Human's only record permanent memory from about the age of 5, not 3), Madoka remembers meeting and interacting with the "older" Sekirei (the First Five).  
Those Sekirei were adults _at that time_ , there is a definite problem with the time line.  
Quizzing Madoka about the appearance of the older Sekirei, our best guess is that 02 Matsu, 03 Kazehana, 04 Karasuba, and 05 Mutsu were all approximately 20 years old, physiologically, at the time Madoka and her peers were five or six years old, physiologically. There's no way to know how old Madoka was by the calendar unfortunately.  
If their ship was discovered in 1999 and the earliest the first Sekirei could be born was sometime in 2000, then assuming Madoka was 5 years old in 2005 (fitting her appearance of about nineteen today in 2019) then _how could there be four Sekirei who were at least eighteen years old when Madoka was 5?  
_ Madoka has mentioned "Adjustments", periods of time when a Sekirei was taken away and put unconscious for modifications to be done to them by MBI's Researchers. It appears that at least some part of these Adjustments was to artificially age the Sekirei. Otherwise it would be impossible for a five year old Madoka to remember encountering a twenty year old 04 Karasuba. Not if the earliest 04 Karasuba could have been born (gestated, whatever the correct term is) is 1999-2000!  
Not all Adjustments were about aging the subject. But there were several that were, enough that it is impossible to estimate Madoka's calendar age.  
The Sekirei in Group 11 made particular note of hallmark Adjustments, such as the Puberty Adjustment. In a Puberty Adjustment the Sekirei would depart the Dorms as a child (Madoka establishes them as all about the same as 8 or 9 year old children in this stage) and come back as an adolescent with notable breasts and wider hips, just one day later in some cases.  
What sort of technology has MBI acquired from the Sekirei ship? Artificially aging a person? One assumes they must be able to use this technology to not only age the body but also to fill in at least _some_ of what the Sekirei would learn in those missing, accelerated, years. Simulated experience? Education? Hard-copied algorithims or heuristics stamped onto the mind of the patient? Producing an infant mind in an adult body would be utterly useless for anything other than organ harvesting and organ harvesting was obviously not what MBI was doing in their Sekirei Labs program.  
One sincerely hopes that they were able to provide the accelerated subjects with some emotional maturity in addition to whatever other mental aging was done, or all of the Sekirei will be walking time bombs, rife with emotional and mental instabilities that are almost guaranteed to go off at some point. Those who were artificially aged the most would likely have the most noticeable problems, the more extreme instabilities.  
If so, that would explain why MBI spent so much effort having the Sekirei spend time as toddlers, then time as children, then more time as adolescents, instead of simply maturing all 107 unborn Sekirei to adulthood in one go.  
What else could this technology do? What miracles of education, health, disease control, are MBI holding back from the rest of humanity?

And, most importantly, why?

* * *

Started Oct 6 2014  
Completed Oct 9 2014  
Final Edits May 10 2015  
Posted May 16 2015


	6. Bk2 - Ch2 Endings and Beginnings

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 2.2 – Ch 6 Endings and Beginning

 _Author's Note: So much for a 10,000 word target. This chapter went a bit overboard and is at 18,000 words._

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Wednesday, December 25th, 2019  
Yoyogi District, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

It was just short of midnight on Christmas. Gregory O'Donnell would ordinarily be asleep by now, comfortably abed with his wife, content and happy with new memories of another happy Christmas spent with his family.

Ordinarily.

Instead, Gregory sat out on the patio of the family apartment, finishing off a second glass of scotch whiskey and smoking a cigarette. And being very cold, seeing as the temperature was damn near freezing out here.

Gregory tipped the glass up to get the last of the whiskey to drip past the ice cubes, then set the crystal tumbler down on the patio table in disgust. Not enough to bother with. He looked appraisingly at the bottle.

" _I shouldn't. Two is my limit. Hn… "_

A minute passed. He flicked more ash from the end of his cigarette.

" _Eh, no one else gives a fuck, why should I?"_

He poured himself another whiskey then picked up the glass, unhurriedly swirling the ice in the golden liquid while pulling in another lungful of delicious tobacco smoke.

The cold air made the exhalation of warm air and smoke dramatically visible, which amused him more than it probably should have. Then he stared off into the nighttime distance, a frown settling on his face, deepening the creases on either side of his mouth.

What a wretched Christmas. Karen had not said a word to him after they left for Midnight Mass. A silent treatment that had endured through the night and all through Christmas Day as well. Gregory knew she was not happy about "Mishi's friend" staying with them and almost every day that passed she seemed to become even more unhappy. But he was damned if he could figure out why, beyond the obvious of Madoka being an incredibly hot teenage girl and Karen being a forty-year-old middle aged woman. Madoka was actually an easy person to like; Karen gave the girl no chances though.

It wasn't like Karen had been in the Jeep last Thursday night when Gregory had kissed Madoka and became her Ashikabi; and Karen couldn't know about that. It wasn't like he had kissed the girl since then, either. His behavior had been above board! So what in the hell was Karen's problem?

There was that whole "accidentally seeing Madoka's amazingly perfect tits" thing the other night, but that was an accident, completely. Madoka would not have flashed him her tits if he had _asked_ ; it was just an accident! And Karen wasn't aware of that incident either.

Gregory was distracted for several minutes imagining a few scenarios in which Madoka agreed to show him her tits when asked. When he realized which recently-well-worn-rut his mind had settled into, again, he shook his head to clear it and tried to focus on the _problems_ that needed _solving_.

Gregory wondered, not for the first time, if he should have told Karen everything when he and Madoka had returned late, last Thursday. He wondered how different everything would be if he'd done so. Very different, for sure; but in what particulars?

At the time, he had been very worried about what MBI and Hiroto Minaka had been communicating to him by way of that casual demonstration of their reach. That seemingly innocuous video conference in his Jeep.

Gregory knew the components of his Jeep very well, especially the dash electronics. He knew, beyond any doubt, that the Jeep did not have the hardware capability to host a video conference the likes of which he'd had with Hiroto Minaka. _There was no camera in the Jeep's dashboard._ The 20cm LED display was not connected to _any_ video feeds or to any components which themselves had video capability. There was no Wi-Fi video streaming hardware built into the Jeep's electronics. There was no cellular telephone service built into the Jeep's components, to allow for video calls over cell networks. The Jeep lacked any method to connect to any sort of data network _and_ it lacked the specific hardware needed to make video conference calls work, notably the lack of a camera in the dash. These truths weren't up for debate, they weren't matters of opinion. His Jeep could not do what Hiroto Minaka had it do!

In other words, MBI and Minaka were telling him that their agents had accessed his Jeep at some point after Madoka started staying with the O'Donnell's on Saturday, December 14th. They had added to the Jeep's electronics and modified other components. They had added or modified at least enough hardware to allow Minaka to "just happen" to appear upon the big display in the dashboard, for an "impromptu" video conference with his new Ashikabi. All of this done smoothly and professionally enough that those additions and modifications were not detected before they were called upon, the night of Thursday, December 19th.

Hell, even the GPS still worked perfectly on the display like it always had. As far as Gregory could tell with a casual perusal of the dash electronics, from the gauge cluster to the media player, everything was still 100% stock, just as designed by the Chrysler Group LLC and manufactured in Toledo, Ohio.

Gregory received the unspoken message from MBI loud and clear. If they had accessed his Jeep long enough to install new hardware and software, test it to insure it worked, and polished the installation so it was undetectable until needed, then Gregory was certain they'd have had no difficulty doing the same within his family's apartment.

And _that_ pissed him off. He was protective of his Jeep, but his computer systems in his home were his baby and the idea of unapproved fingers pawing about inside the hardware and the software of his big main computer made him quite angry. Sure, yes, of course it burned him to think some MBI Security Intelligence mook might be watching security camera footage of his teenaged daughter in the bath. Yes, of course that was infuriating.

But the idea that they'd messed with his computers? A God damned outrage!

Gregory was a fair shade-tree mechanic, he felt moderately competent working on his Jeep for some things. In the same sense, he was a fair computer-jockey. He felt comfortable working with, upgrading, and even pushing beyond manufacturers' specs the various components of his electronic surroundings. He'd laid out the network for the big tower computer in the living room and all the peripheral components to work with each other. Many of the smaller, less robust, electronic devices in their household were set up to lean on the big server box, letting it handle as much of the actual number crunching as was possible. The tablets and phones and the one set of 'Google Glasses' Gregory had toyed with last year which were gathering dust in a drawer somewhere, the cellular watches and the wall mounted LED tvs, all of them were connected and played well with each other, the network as a whole was equal to more than the sum of its parts. Also, his photography cameras, all of which were set up to immediately dump their memory into the big server box as soon as they got within range of the network. The server knew exactly what to do with the new images as soon as they were handed over, filing and indexing and applying naming conventions established exactly as Gregory liked it.

Into all of this MBI had… inserted… its grubby fingers.

It made Gregory feel dirty.

Sullied.

Violated.

They likely even had access to his porn folder!

Gregory grasped the tumbler of scotch and drained it before filling it again.

Worst, he knew better than to fool himself into believing he could find so much as a trace of modification within the software on the systems, traces that would prove that someone had inserted reporting-ware and redirect-ware. Nor would he believe he could fix whatever it was that MBI's experts had done. The most he would accomplish would be to fool himself into believing he had fixed what they had done.

They could have installed actual _hardware_ redirectors for all he knew. They could have a secondary router installed between his apartment and the nearest telecom node mirroring every request his router made. There was no limit to how compromised the entire system could be, now.

So… he made what changes he could and lived with the rest. He'd already reprogrammed his phones and cameras to dump their image data to brand new cloud storage accounts instead of to the big server. Otherwise, just going about his business as usual seemed the best plan.

He wondered how many of the other Ashikabi were too naïve or just too stupid to get the point of the little "welcome to the Sekirei Plan, suckers" video-conference demonstration from MBI. A fair number of them, he would guess. Especially if most of them were young 20-somethings. Gregory sipped his scotch and smiled grimly at that image. An idiot 20-year-old ronin, gaping like a fish as his 25-year-old cathode-ray-tube type television, complete with bunny-ear antennae and a channel selector operated by turning a knob, hosts a real-time video conference with full duplex audio. The idiot would be blithely talking back and forth with Hiroto Minaka and his insane white cape, being told about the Sekirei Plan while not being told anything that might help him, a vaguely surprised "Wow, how did they do that?" expression on the idiots face.

Yeah. Gregory could easily see that happening.

So yes, he'd had a lot on his mind when he had arrived at the apartment Thursday night, with Madoka carrying her "care package" box from MBI., The box, with printed "#37" on the exterior, contained new clothing and replacements for her false ID and her MBI Platinum Card.

Then Karen had lit into him right away about being late and not calling…

He _had_ thought about telling her everything. But not until the next day.

And by then it seemed wiser to keep quiet. "J _ust for now",_ he had told himself.

He knew ' _just for now'_ was really the chickenshit version of ' _from now on'._ Gregory did _try_ to be honest with himself, even if honesty sometimes took until the next day and a clearer head. Or more scotch.

Of course it became more difficult to tell Karen about the crazy mostly-hypothetical-still alien Sekirei and the multi-national trillion-yen corporation which was making threats towards the O'Donnell's. Threats of dire consequences if they didn't keep quiet about the Sekirei Plan. And of course there was the actual danger that Madoka had brought into their lives .

As well, Gregory would have had to fess up to misleading Karen about Madoka in the first place, with Mishi's help.

" _Misleading? Be honest, Greg. It was 'lying to Karen about Madoka in the first place'. Calling it 'misleading' is more chickenshit, and you know it."_

Gregory knew a fair part of why he had not said anything was because he did not want to hear about how his "stray dog adoption" nature had endangered his family.

He was already aware of this; he really did not need Karen screaming it into his ear. And he knew that was exactly what would happen. Karen screaming things at him that he already knew.

There was also that kissing thing.

Yeah.

Didn't really want to talk to Karen about that, either.

So he kept quiet, even though he understood that the situation was untenable. Now he really needed to figure out what to do from here. To take care of Madoka, to patch things up with his wife, to distance the O'Donnell's from whatever risks the Sekirei Plan brought.

But other than finding somewhere else for Madoka to live, which he couldn't even start on until tomorrow at the earliest, he was drawing a blank.

If Madoka had her own apartment, what would that mean for her and her Ashikabi? They were expected to be a "team" in the Sekirei Plan. Gregory was certain that MBI had contingency plans for dealing with recalcitrant Ashikabi, they would have to. He doubted just sticking his Sekirei in her own apartment and contacting her every few days to see if she was okay was going to cut it with MBI.

He was _very_ sure it would not cut it with Madoka.

He took another sip of the cold scotch whiskey and then swirled the ice around in the glass. No, Madoka would not find that arrangement acceptable. And _that_ was… unexpected. Over the last week the beautiful Sekirei had grown downright affectionate with Gregory. He did not notice it at first; it had happened gradually, but he saw it now. She often reached out to touch him when she would look up at him and smile. She would take his arm with her hand if they were walking next to each other. She smiled at him, as though just seeing him near made her happy.

It was not anything more than what Mishi might do. Not _really_. But… Gregory knew that whatever the relationship was it was not familial. Nor was it the mentor-student type relationship that Gregory fostered between himself and his students. There were elements of both, true. But…

Gregory accepted that it wasn't innocent. At least, not the way he thought of her. He hadn't taken communion at Midnight Mass, because he knew he had sinned in his heart.

His wife seemed to take his abstention from communion as confirmation of whatever her suspicions were, to Gregory's annoyance.

Gregory could not fool himself that he did not _love every minute_ of Madoka's nearby presence. He couldn't fool himself into thinking he didn't love the fact that he was _important_ to her. It was beyond the flattery a man might feel at the attention of a beautiful young woman. To be clear, it _was_ that, yes. But… more, too.

Gregory now appreciated that while there _might_ be a man, somewhere, who could let such attention from such a beautiful young woman roll over him and be unaffected, Gregory O'Donnell was not that man.

And he knew, he _knew_ , that no matter what he did next, this was going to end badly. The gods always punished those whose reach exceeded their grasp and Sanjunana Madoka very much exceeded his grasp.

He was swimming in deeper waters than he had any business in.

Gregory looked at the bottle of scotch as he absently swirled the ice cubes within his glass. He tossed his cold cigarette butt into the can next to the table and he sighed. What he really needed was to go to bed. It was cold out here, he was tired, and he was not solving any of his problems by drinking more scotch.

But he also did not want to go lay down in his bed and spend another night with his wife's back turned to him, anger and judgment radiating from her even in her sleep.

He lit another cigarette.

And since he was going to be out here long enough to smoke another, he poured himself another drink.

Why not? No one else cared; why should he?

Gregory took another drink and looked off into the night.

" _Man, she really has amazing tits."_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Thursday evening, _"Boxing Day,"_ Gregory thought to himself as he lay on the couch, watching the sequel to "Blade Runner" on the living room's big monitor. A surprisingly good movie, really. And the all-new original soundtrack from Vangelis was worth whatever it cost the producers.

The girls were in Mishi's bedroom where Mishi was giving Madoka the "Teenage Girl Cell Phone Tutorial" on how to use her new Samsung phone. Gregory was a fair tech head but no one in the entire world, including the engineers at Samsung, knew as much about how to use their phones as the teenage girls who used them did. Gregory knew Madoka was in good hands; she'd come out of the session an expert in the use of her new phone.

Gregory glanced at the front door as it opened and Karen walked in, right on time from work. He kept his face neutral and his eyes on the TV as she took of her coat and hung it with her purse on the back of one of the breakfast-bar stools. He could feel her looking at him, reproachfully. Gregory now wished that he had not spent his day off work lounging around in his flannel pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt, watching movies. Karen standing there in an ¥80,000 business suit and him lying on the couch unshaven and in pajamas was not equal footing.

"She goes, by tomorrow, Greg."

"Say again?" Gregory flicked the pause button for the movie and frowned. "Madoka, you mean? You want to throw her out on St. Stephen's Feast? Or tomorrow on the Feast of St. John? Seriously?"

Karen did not appear to find Gregory's wit amusing. "She goes, by tomorrow, Greg."

"Karen," Gregory replied, trying to moderate the tone of his voice, though it was difficult, "then perhaps you should tell Mishi that her friend has to get out by tomorrow. I don't know what your issue is with the girl but if you just can't stand her that much then why don't you tell Mishi. She's her friend."

Karen was audibly grinding her teeth; Gregory could _hear_ it across the living room. Admittedly, it was a Japanese-apartment-scale living room, but still. He shuddered to think how much money in porcelain crowns she was grinding away, standing there.

She responded to his suggestion with one word: "No."

"What? No? What do you mean 'no'?"

But she didn't answer. She had already turned her back, picked up her purse and coat, and was heading to the bedroom.

"Just 'no'? What the fuck, Karen?" Gregory sat up and rubbed his hands across his unshaven face. This whole damn situation was getting more aggravating by the day.

It was his job to kick "Mishi's friend" out into the cold? Because Karen had a problem? That was _bullshit_. Well, it would be bullshit if Madoka were here because Mishi was her friend from school. But that _was_ the story as far as Karen knew. So this was _bullshit_. Where did Karen get off telling him he had to kick the girl out, when Karen was the one with a problem?

A pillow hit him in the side of the head, followed by a folded blanket. Gregory looked over to the hallway that lead to the bedrooms, frowning in confusion.

"And you can sleep in here."

"What the fuck, Karen?"

But she was already slamming the bedroom door.

Gregory flopped back onto the couch. The fuck? Twenty damn years and he had never "slept on the couch" because his wife was mad at him.

Does that really even happen? That is just in movies and TV shows, right?

He looked at his pillow from his side of the bed and the blanket.

"Guess fucking not." He placed the still partially folded blanket at the far end of the couch and lay down again, looking at the paused movie on the TV screen, muttering to himself, "I'm still not telling her she has to go. Karen can do that shit if she feels that strongly about it."

"Fuckin' bullshit."

Gregory was so upset and involved with his own anger and frustration that he completely missed the white-hot flare of emotion in the back of his mind, where his bond to his Sekirei was kept.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka had been about to exit the hallway bath when Karen had returned home. Instead, Madoka shut the bathroom door and tried to use her Farsight. Madoka concentrated on "seeing" around the wall and into the hallway, and "hearing" what Karen and Gregory were saying to each other. She managed to push her point-of-view into the hallway, and from there she watched and listened until she saw Karen return to the master bedroom and slam the door, after throwing the pillow and blanket at Gregory.

Certain that she would not run into Karen in the hallway now, Madoka opened the bathroom door and stepped out.

Madoka stood there in the hallway, her fists clenched and her face contorted into a snarl, trying to keep control of her emotions. She felt a rush of anger in her heart like she had never experienced in her life. Not just anger but _rage._ Rage, and a desire to _hurt_ and _tear_ and _kill_ , boiling up from some previously hidden place in her Sekirei heart. She felt almost overwhelmed by cruel, hot, emotions, of a sort that she had never thought herself capable.

All directed at Gregory's wife, Karen.

Madoka glared at the closed bedroom door that stood between her and the woman who had infuriated her, and who had _hurt her Ashikabi_.

Into the burning darkness of her own mind, Madoka shouted, _"Just leave, you mean spirited bitch! Just go! You do not want to be here anyway!"_

Finding the silent shouting in her own head cathartic, Madoka waited the several long minutes that it took for her heart rate to calm. She slipped back into the room that she had been sharing with Mishi, then tried to pay attention to the other girl as she described the functions of Madoka's new phone.

It was some time, though, before she could truly concentrate on anything other than her desire for Karen to be gone from her and Gregory's lives.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

The next morning, Karen slamming the apartment door behind her as she left for work roused Gregory from his sleep. She was either pissed she had to go to work on a Friday while Gregory was off all week or she was still pissed about Madoka.

Or pissed that Gregory hadn't spent the evening begging her for forgiveness through the door to their bedroom.

Or something else entirely. Who knew?

 _Probably_ pissed that Gregory hadn't begged for forgiveness for his many flaws and sins through the closed bedroom door. Their relationship had become… unbalanced over the last few years, in the sense that Karen had, against the normal course of these sorts of things, aged quite nicely compared to her husband and was now a rather more handsome woman than a casual observer would guess Gregory would have as his wife. She also now made quite a bit more money than Gregory did.

Gregory had accepted these new truths as they had developed; he refused to be the sort of insecure man who was unmade by his wife eclipsing him in her career (or any other aspect of life for that matter). Nevertheless, both of these new facts of life were at least a _little_ bit of a turnaround from the early years of their marriage and Karen now had a tendency to expect Gregory to grovel whenever she was in a bad mood.

Gregory had noticed this tendency and he just put up with it. _You put up with things_ in a marriage. That's what kept marriages together. So he occasionally groveled, if that was the price of keeping Karen content.

Last night he had not groveled. And that's probably why Karen left for work with a slammed door and not a word to him.

Slamming doors, yelling arguments. Gregory figured their neighbors must have been loving the gaijin mouth-breathers who don't know how to behave like civilized people. Though, to be fair, only one of their neighbors in the apartment block were that sort. Most were pretty liberal, for Japanese. Which isn't really very liberal at all, but it could have been worse.

Groggy, but incredibly happy that he'd insisted on the _very expensive couch_ instead of the cheaper couch when they had selected their living room furniture five years ago, Gregory stumbled into the kitchen, started a pot of coffee, then considered making a bit of Friday morning breakfast for himself, Mishi, and Madoka.

Pancakes sounded good. Gregory checked to see if they had the necessary ingredients as well as maple syrup. He muttered to himself as he looked through the pantry, "Be damned if I'm having pancakes without maple syrup…"

"I would be glad to go to the store at the corner and get some, Gregory." Head and shoulders buried in the pantry, Gregory smiled. That voice. He _really_ liked that voice.

He just _had_ to take Madoka to karaoke some evening. She would _kill_ if she could carry a tune at all.

"G'morning, Mado." Gregory leaned back out of the kitchen pantry and smiled over at the short blonde girl.

 _Smiled at his Sekirei_ , a part of his mind, way in the back of his head, insisted. That particular part of his mind, which had been appropriately and decently still for 40 years, had become persistent and vocal over the last few days.

"Here, I'll write it down, Mado. You okay for walking down to the corner grocery? I'll go with you if you like; I'd just need to get dressed."

Madoka held up her phone and replied, "I can make notes on this now, so just tell me what we need and I will go get it. And I think I am okay to go to the grocery for a few items without an escort, Ashikabi-san."

Gregory sniggered then nodded his agreement, "Alright, as you wish, my dear Miss Sanjunana! We _do_ need maple syrup. Not 'pancake syrup' or 'butter flavored syrup' or some other crap, but ' _maple syrup'_. If they don't have any then come back and I'll drive to the big grocery. I'm serious, Mado! Genuine real actual maple syrup or nothing. If in doubt, snap a pic and text it to me to be sure."

"Yes sir!" Madoka grinned at her Ashikabi's serious insistence on this critical breakfast component.

He muttered to himself as he checked the refrigerator's contents, "No son of New Hampshire like me is going to tarnish his palate with that 'maple flavored' or 'butter flavored' corn syrup abomination that passes for…"

Madoka did her best to only _quietly_ laugh at Gregory's weirdness about syrup.

Gregory gave her the rest of a short shopping list, enough for breakfast and lunch, no more than would be comfortable for her to carry home in two canvas bags, which he also handed her from the hook in the pantry where such canvas bags were kept.

As she left for the store, Gregory could not help but appreciate the new athletic pants Madoka was wearing. He did not know if they were sweat pants, yoga pants, spray-on-paint, or a temporary rub-on tattoo, but it sure was nice watching her walk away while wearing them. Madoka had the kind of rounded inverted-heart-shaped ass that songs should be written about. Poetry composed for. The most talented sculptors in the world should be commissioned to immortalize that tush in timeless marble so that blind people could run their hands across it so as to understand what perfection is. Really, if not for her flawless face and DD cup tits, Madoka would probably be famous for her incredible tush.

" _Has to be an alien. Has to be."_

Once his Sekirei was gone from the apartment and on her way to the store, Gregory decided on a quick shower and some much needed "relief". He had a while before Mado would be back with the groceries. And _damn_ but that had been a _hell_ of a nice view of her ass…

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Ten minutes later, Sekirei number 37 Madoka was picking herself up off the floor of the local small grocery, blushing so intensely she was sure blood vessels were going to burst in her cheeks.

She tried to graciously accept the solicitously offered help that the wide-eyed young man who worked at the grocery offered. He scurried about and collected her purchases from where they had fallen and he replaced them in the canvas tote bags for her. The helpful young man even went so far as to fetch a fresh new dozen eggs, as the original dozen she'd purchased were now compromised in their structural integrity thanks to her recent bout of _thrashing about on the floor while seemingly attempting to hump the Kikkoman Soy Sauce display rack!_

Her acceptance of his aid was probably a few notches short of "gracious" and quite a bit closer to "snarling with her lips pulled back from her teeth". But she _did_ try and should get credit for trying.

"No, I am fine, thank you! Thank you! I am fine!" She fled several other _very concerned_ young men who had each offered to give her a lift back to her home in their cars since she obviously was not well.

By the time she was almost back to the O'Donnell apartment the crisp December morning air had cooled her embarrassment greatly. Nevertheless, she _did_ make a point from now on to try to notice if Gregory had had his morning shower yet _before_ she went out in public early in the day.

If she ever showed her face in public again, that is.

Madoka also made a note to buy more of these athletic pants. Her Ashikabi apparently _really_ liked them.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

After the breakfast dishes had been cleaned and put away by the girls, Gregory called them out onto the patio to talk. While Mishi put on more clothes and Madoka went to fetch her athletic hoodie, to suit the sunny but cold December 27th weather, Gregory poured himself another cup of coffee and took it out to the patio. He was just lighting a cigarette when Madoka and Mishi stepped out onto the patio.

Mishi had to complain, of course. In English, since the family had long ago defined the patio as 'in the apartment' for purposes of the House Rules on Languages. "Jeez Dad, if you'd quit smoking we could talk inside like civilized people, you know that?"

"Hn." Gregory gave his daughter a flat look.

She rolled her eyes, "Argh! Stop it with that 'Hn' thing!"

Gregory's facial control broke at that and he started laughing. "Alright, and yes, I know, I shouldn't smoke. That's not news, sweetie."

"Hn." Mishi returned, causing Gregory to laugh again.

"Okay, okay, stop it, I need to talk to you both about something serious and you're making that impossible." Gregory took a deep breath and exhaled loudly, his good humor evaporating. Madoka was sitting across from him at the patio table, her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, quietly waiting to hear what Gregory wanted to say. Mishi was less patient.

"Alright, Dad, what's up? Is this about Mom?"

Gregory nodded, "Yeah. Last night when she got home, not only did she throw me out of the bedroom to sleep on the couch as you saw this morning but she also told me Mado had to move out, today." Gregory ignored the expected and loud protests from Mishi and kept talking, "And she said she wouldn't tell you. I had to. Which is kind of bullshit, since she's the one with the problem."

Madoka sat quietly, waiting to hear what her Ashikabi wanted her to do. Gregory got the distinct feeling that she felt he would take care of the problem by whatever means necessary.

It was nice for people to have faith in you, but at the same time Gregory felt that people might have unrealistic expectations.

Mishi was, again and predictably, not nearly as reserved in her response. "That's just bull… that's just wrong, Dad! You guys can't just kick Mado out! Where would she go?" Mishi looked over at the blonde girl sitting next to her, continuing, "Mado, I don't want you to have to go! I've really liked it with you staying here with us."

A small smile and a quiet, "Thank you, Mishi" was Madoka's reply. She continued to watch Gregory, wanting to hear what he had to say.

Gregory sipped his coffee then grimaced. "Well, I think it's bullshit. Especially given that she wouldn't even tell you, Mishi, that your friend, who supposedly needs a place to stay, has to get out right away. She wants _me_ to be the bad guy and for _you_ to be mad at _me_ because Madoka has to go."

"But Dad, that doesn't make any sense! Madoka is here because you met her and she needed a place to stay."

Gregory chuckled and grinned crookedly over at his daughter, "Ah, but that's not the story your Mom knows, remember? As far as she is concerned Madoka is your friend from school with the stalker boyfriend."

Mishi literally facepalmed at the reminder and groaned, "Oh my Lord! For some reason I had completely forgotten that, Dad! You're right, that makes it even more wrong! She could at least tell me herself."

"Yeah, well, I'm afraid both of you are getting pulled into the middle of something that really isn't about you. Karen is pissed at me or unhappy with me or Japan or her job or… something. Madoka being here was the straw but not the entire problem."

"What do you mean, Dad? I thought you and Mom got along well."

Gregory took a drag on his cigarette and glanced over at Madoka, who was still quietly sitting, watching him with her sky-blue eyes, inscrutable behind her perfect beauty. He exhaled slowly then answered, "I thought so too, more or less. But I guess not. Sweetie… there's no way for anyone outside a husband and wife to ever understand what is going on with a marriage. Even _they_ might not understand, like now. Karen and I haven't been real close for a long while, Mishi. Not like what _you_ would think of as close."

Mishi just shrugged with an unhappy look on her face, which Gregory figured meant Mishi thought he just wasn't telling her what the problems really were. He _could_ tell her again and in different ways that he did not really know, but he knew it would not help.

"I just wanted you two to know what was up; when Karen gets home it's entirely possible she'll blow a gasket about me not doing what she ordered me to do, namely kicking Madoka out onto the streets with no warning at all." Gregory scowled at even the idea and at his wife's gall. "If she does then there is a motel not far from here which is nice enough for a few nights, Madoka. I'd rather you stay here with us, but at the same time I would hate for you to be stuck in the middle of a domestic fight that isn't your problem. If I give you the sign, I want you to slip out and just go on down to the motel. I don't want you here being a lightning rod for Karen's temper. By the same token, Mishi, if that all happens, please, just shut your bedroom door and let me try to deal with it. Don't get involved, please."

Gregory also worried, a great deal, about that look he had noticed on Madoka's face Monday evening at dinner, when Karen had pitched a fit and stomped away from the table. He did _not_ want to find out that Sekirei happened to fly into killing rages if someone threw a teacup at their Ashikabi's head.

Just, you know, for instance.

Mishi narrowed her eyes, and then turned to look at her blonde friend, "Do you have money for a hotel room, Mado? I'm sure we could help…"

Madoka nodded her head in answer. "Money is not a problem, Mishi. I received replacements for my identification and my credit card."

"Oh. I didn't know." Mishi looked surprised that she had been left out of that bit of news, but rallied gamely anyway. "I wouldn't want you to have to go live in a hotel all alone! I like you staying here and what would you do if you were all alone at a hotel? If you have to leave for the night I could go with you!"

" _And Mishi must involve herself in the drama,"_ Gregory thought to himself. _"Then again, she has been sleeping snuggled up to Madoka for over a week. I'd not want to just let that go either I suppose. It's probably really really easy to get used to snuggling with Mado."_ Gregory suppressed a grin and shook his head, "Mishi, that's a kind gesture, but you slipping out with Mado would go straight to your Mom screaming at _me_ about hiding _you_ from her. Or some other sort of overreaction. If it comes to a loud argument here, just let Mado slip out. She won't be disappearing forever, just overnight."

Gregory realized Mishi was about to get into questions neither he nor Madoka wanted to have to answer, like questions about Madoka's long-term plans. He moved to wrap up the conversation before Mishi could rally an argument against his veto. "We'll call the motel down the street, reserve a room, so if things get … difficult here tonight Mado will have a place to sleep for the night without worry. A contingency plan, okay? I'd rather her stay with us until after the New Year, and _then_ worry about longer term plans. That sound good?"

Mishi looked at Madoka to see what she thought. Gregory could tell his sixteen-year-old daughter was unhappy about the now-obvious fractures in her parents' relationship, especially as all this was catching her by surprise, out of the blue. She was also excited about being treated like a real person instead of like a child. Gregory knew this kind of thing fed her drama-seeking side. Not a nice trait, but he tried to be honest about his children's natures, positive and negative, at least to himself. And Mishi, darling wonderful daughter that she was, _was_ a complete drama queen.

Madoka looked at Gregory through her long lashes, her eyes narrowed. She answered, "If you think that is best, then I am sure it is, Gregory. I too would prefer to stay here but at the same time I dislike that I have caused such trouble for you."

Gregory shook his head, "You didn't really cause it, Mado. The straw that breaks the camel's back isn't _really_ to blame." He took another drag on his cigarette then blew out the smoke, then rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes.

"It's all the other shit piled up on the camel's back that's really at fault."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

An hour later, Madoka's soft voice caught Gregory's attention as he was sorting through recent photos on his computer. He had a surprisingly large number of really good photos of Madoka.

"Gregory, may I ask a question? A question that is probably rude, possibly an invasion of your privacy?"

He partially turned in his desk chair, his arm now draped across the back, to face his Sekirei where she was sitting on the couch, having been reading on one of the tablets. Gregory answered her, "Sure, Mado. Anything. Mishi's out with Tomo, so we can talk freely. And I promise you, no question you will ever ask me will offend me. I might not answer, but you can always ask me, anything."

Madoka pursed her lips and her brows drew downwards in a frown. "Very well, thank you, Gregory. I understand you would like me to leave the apartment and be out of the way in case Karen starts a big fight with you when she comes home. A fight caused because you will not tell me to leave and never return, which is what Karen wishes."

The beautiful young woman turned to meet Gregory's gaze, brow still furrowed and both hands stuffed into the pockets of her grey hoodie. "I will do as you wish, my Ashikabi, but _only_ if you will tell me, honestly and truly, what a 'domestic fight', as you called it, involves."

She held up a hand to forestall his answer for a moment, "Gregory, please understand that almost everything I know about Japanese home life was learned from television programs, movies, anime, and manga. I also watched a lot of American television and read some American novels, as I selected American English as my secondary language. But I recognize now that my understanding of even Japanese life is very limited and my understanding of how an American family lives is almost zero. So I do not know _exactly_ what you mean when you talk of a fight with your wife."

In a moment of clarity, Gregory realized Madoka was _concerned_ for him. For his actual physical safety! Before he could laugh off the misunderstanding, he made himself stop and consider what the situation must look like from Madoka's point of view. Words like "fight" certainly had quite a broad range of definitions; he could not blame Madoka for perhaps overestimating the danger of Karen's imminent return from work.

"Thank you for being concerned for me, Madoka." Gregory gave the girl a smile and turned his desk chair around to face her completely, to give her his undivided attention. "The sort of 'fight' that is the most likely would only involve loud words, cursing, perhaps one or both parties saying angry, even hurtful things, to the other. Perhaps it would go as far as something fragile and breakable being picked up and thrown against a wall in anger, like a… coffee cup or a saucer. People tend to find breaking the china to be an effective stress reliever when they are emotionally wound up."

Madoka did not respond to the mild attempt at humor, but her frown did ease a little. She chewed on her lower lip absently and responded, "So there is no danger of anyone being physically hurt or danger of an escalation beyond angry words and perhaps someone maybe throwing a vase at a wall?"

"Just so. Um, though domestic disputes _can_ escalate dramatically; the police hate having to go out on calls when the problem is a husband and wife in a fight. Any time high emotions are in play a situation can go dangerously bad very quickly and there are few situations you will live in where 'high emotions' are going to bubble up more than with the people you've lived with for many many years." Gregory realized he probably was not reassuring the girl's worries and he cursed his tendency to being pedantic, so added, "But that's just in general, Mado. I'm not the sort of guy who loses his temper easily, and Karen might be prickly, even short tempered at times but she's not too likely to escalate this into something physically confrontational. A thrown coffee cup, at most."

Gregory pursed his own lips and looked to look towards the sunlight in the bare trees, just beyond the closed patio door and the patio fence. "Frankly, I don't think Karen cares enough about me any more to really go crazy about this. I know that probably sounds counter-intuitive, that someone who cares less is less likely to get out of control angry. But keep in mind, the dangerous situations are the ones where people's most powerful emotions are agitated and involved, and I don't think Karen has had 'powerful emotions' about me or our marriage in quite a while. So, it's probably fine, you don't have any reason to worry."

Madoka nodded her understanding. Gregory could tell by the look on her face that she was now reassured that she was not running out on Gregory and leaving him to face mortal danger alone. But she still looked unhappy about the way he had described the situation.

Gregory could understand that. He too was unhappy about the way he had described the situation.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

At 5pm, Madoka was sitting at Gregory's computer desk in the living room, watching a video. Gregory had shown her how to navigate the desktop system well enough to get to the web and search for what subjects might interest her. From his seat on the couch, it appeared that she was watching a video about how to wear make-up. He couldn't tell for sure. She was engrossed in the subject, whatever it was, which is why he had shown her how to watch videos on the much larger screen of his big desktop system, as opposed to the small screen on her new phone. He _had_ asked her to watch those videos at the desk instead of having them cast up onto the big wall monitor-television. _He_ did not care to watch videos about the proper method of applying mascara.

He was taking notes in his black A4 notebook with an ink pen, ambient music playing in his earbuds at a low volume. Considering all of the electronic gadgetry at hand, Madoka had found it odd for him to continue keeping notes in a paper notebook by hand and she had asked Gregory about that very issue earlier. "I already think of that spiral notebook as a part of you, Gregory; you have been using it for your note keeping since the night I told you the truth about me, in your classroom after school. But why do you not keep your notes using one of the high tech devices you have around here?"

He had answered, "No matter how careful you are, there's no way to be sure what you are inputting on a computer or tablet or phone is secure. I know that everything I write in this notebook is completely safe from remote computer hackery by MBI or anyone else. Someone could steal it or I could lose it, but all things considered I find those risks less likely than the more high-tech risks I'd be facing if I kept my notes electronically. It is also more secure in the sense that it's unlikely someone could steal my notebook without me realizing it, whereas they could copy a digital file on my computer and make off with it and I'd never be aware." He chuckled ruefully, "Rarely does anyone have _reason_ to be paranoid about their information, but in the case of MBI and our information on the Sekirei… better safe than sorry, I figure."

So he was writing with his pen in the Notebook. Tonight it had been notes on all of the Sekirei who Madoka had been able to remember from her years in the MBI Sekirei Labs. Their names, numbers, appearance, demeanor, powers, who they were friendly with, who they didn't like, any unusual situations they'd been involved in. Madoka had far more in her head about the Sekirei and the MBI Administration and Research personnel than she had thought she had, all of it coming out in bits and pieces as Gregory methodically questioned her about the other Sekirei.

He had basic summaries about 36 different Sekirei now. That left 71 others, _and_ number 01, about whom they had no information. Madoka knew of no one who had ever admitted to having seen or met 01 and she had only the rumors and outright mythology spread among the young Sekirei about the savior figure 01. They also had the reasonable inference that there was a 01 due to how unlikely it was that any numbering system would start at 02. Gregory considered this lack of information about Sekirei 01 a serious problem that they should address if it was at all possible. "Madoka, she is the _power_ that the Kouten installed upon your colony ship to keep what is happening to you Sekirei from happening. Sekirei 01 would be uniquely qualified, in both power and knowledge, to stop this madness and correct the harm that has already been done. All of our own strategies for surviving the Sekirei Plan and our plans for how to counter various elements of MBI and the opposition Ashikabi would be needless, if we could simply find a living Sekirei 01. If we could free her from whatever is preventing her from doing what she was meant to do, namely protecting and shepherding the 107 Sekirei to success in their mission. That she is a ghost to us is distressing and it's something I would very much like to correct."

Gregory paused in reviewing his notes, glancing at his cell watch, seeing that it was time for Karen to be leaving her office; she would be home in about an hour. His stomach got butterflies at the thought, which in turn irritated him. Thinking of his wife coming home gave him butterflies of anxiety in his gut? This was completely unacceptable; one way or another this was going to be resolved. Gregory was _not_ going to live like this any longer if he could do anything about it.

"Dad?" Mishi's hesitant voice called to him from the hallway. She walked into the living room, holding her phone up, "Mom just texted me and asked if you had talked to me about anything important today. Why is she beating around the bush? What should I tell her?"

Gregory set down his pen along the spiral of the Notebook and then rubbed his forehead. Of _course_ Karen was going to question Mishi instead of simply calling or texting him. He saw that Madoka had paused her video and had turned around in the desk chair to face him and Mishi.

Closing his eyes and attempting to keep his temper in check, Gregory answered, "Well, Mishi dear, if I had to guess at what your mom is up to, she probably wants to know if I told you that your friend Madoka has to get out today, like Karen ordered me to do, last night. But she can't come out and ask you 'did Gregory throw that girl out today or not', as that would give away to you that this is something Karen is pushing for, and she doesn't want that, she wants you to be mad at me, for kicking your friend out onto the street. As I have not and am following her orders, I am not telling you that your friend Madoka has to get out today, you should probably just tell her no; I've not spoken to you about anything important."

Again, the butterflies made themselves known in Gregory's stomach, as Mishi tapped out her reply to Karen. Gregory made a mental note that communication through Mishi was petty bullshit and it was _not_ going to happen again, at least on his part. If Karen wanted to know what he was doing or not doing she should ask _him_. It was not fair to Mishi for either of them to be using her as some kind of proxy.

"Mom says she's staying at Miss Hashimoto's tonight."

Gregory stared at Mishi, who returned the look with a pensive expression of her own. He blurted out, "Really?" Recovering from his surprise quickly, Gregory shook his head and continued, "No, never mind, Mishi. Thank you for letting me know. I'll talk to your Mom myself if I have questions for her. And, Mishi, dear, please, if she asks you again about me or tries to get you to say something to me, any of this," Gregory waved his hands vaguely towards Mishi's phone, "please feel free to tell her she can email me, text me, call me, herself. I don't want you feeling like you have to be in the middle sending messages back and forth, okay?"

"You know it's not that easy, Dad."

Gregory nodded his understanding and added, "Sweetie, you've got the right to not be made into a tool for either your mom or me to use against the other. I promise you, with complete sincerity, that I will not intentionally channel my communications with Karen through you or your brother. If I forget and try to talk to Karen through you, you point out to me that I'm doing it and tell me no. I mean it, Mishi." Gregory held up a hand and pointed at Mishi, "Now if you _chose_ to pass messages from your mom to me because, I don't know, maybe it's easier for you than arguing about it with her or it causes you less trouble, that's fine. But whatever you do in this… situation… make sure you are doing it because it's your call, not because you feel pressured or obliged."

Gregory stood up from the couch and stepped over to give his daughter a bear hug, squeezing her against his chest. Demonstrations of affection did not come naturally to Gregory; it simply wasn't how he was raised. But after the birth of his first child, Mark, and then reinforced with the arrival of Mishi several years later, Gregory had made the deliberate resolution to never short change his children when it came to hugs, kisses, and clear declarations of his love for them.

Mishi hugged him back, holding on a bit longer than was her usual tendency. She _was_ upset. But she had inherited his emotional reserve instead of her mother's short fuse and fiery demeanor. When it came to matters of real significance, Mishi was downright aloof. Gregory figured it was quite likely that was how people saw him, too.

Gregory savored the unique feel of a sincere hug from his daughter. Her arms squeezed around his middle and her head nodded understanding, her cheek pressed against his chest.

"Thank you. I love you, daddy."

"Sure, sweetie. I love you too."

After Mishi retreated to her room and shut the door behind her, Gregory turned and noticed Madoka was watching him. He frowned, then met his Sekirei's serious blue-eyed gaze. "I'm sorry, Madoka. I really am."

She tilted her head slightly, as she tended to do when puzzled. "For what, Gregory?"

He shrugged and gestured vaguely with his hands, "I'm sorry those you didn't have a dad. Or a mom. Even if it might look like marriage and family is a lot of trouble, it really is the best thing ever. I'd not trade a single 'I love you, daddy' from my daughter for all of the tea in China, or for all the gold in Fort Knox. It's not fair that those bastards at MBI did not provide you with loving parents. Dads and Moms are the people who you can always count on to love you, unconditionally."

Madoka continued to silently study him, wearing that quizzical expression on her lovely face. She didn't reply.

Gregory slumped back onto the couch and returned to the Notebook. He needed to focus on something else or he was going to start drinking scotch and he'd promised himself tonight was scotch free. "Okay Mado, let's develop nomenclature. Just calling this stuff 'powers' is going to drive me crazy. Really, it will, it will drive me absolutely batshit. Are you sure no one at MBI ever used repeated terms for the Sekirei abilities? Or did you ever hear them describe a conceptual framework? That's really where we need to start…"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

It was late, past midnight, and Madoka was beginning to tire. Not physically, since she had spent the entire Friday just sitting about the apartment reading and talking with Gregory and Mishi, other than this morning's short yet orgasmic trip to the grocery. But the tension in the O'Donnell home was taking a toll on all of them, especially Madoka. This was not an environment or circumstance she was used to; it had stresses, anxieties, and worries that were greatly different from those she had grown up with in the MBI Sekirei Labs.

She understood, now, that what coping skills she had developed for dealing with the very specific world of the MBI Sekirei Labs would likely be almost worthless in most situations she'd find herself in, for the rest of her life.

She _had_ , however, tried to at least distract herself this evening, and Mishi and Gregory as well, from the persistent tension they were all experiencing. With quite a bit of success, she admitted.

Madoka was daringly wearing her sleeping clothes while sitting in the living room with Gregory. The thin short shorts and the teal cotton tank top she had borrowed from Mishi back on her first night with the O'Donnell's were comfortable but wearing such clothes in front of her Ashikabi was bolder than she had ever been before.

Not wearing anything under the shorts added a whole new level of daring as well.

Her bare legs were tucked up beside her as she sat on the comfortable couch. The tablet she had been reading was lying, ignored, in her lap, and she realized she had been watching her Ashikabi for several minutes.

Early in the evening Madoka had found a fun way to cheat in the ongoing game between her and Gregory, a game he wasn't even consciously aware they were playing. The game in which _he_ kept trying to avoid getting caught looking at _her_ body (or outright leering at her on occasion) when he thought she couldn't see what he was focusing his attention on.

She found she could _cheat_ by closing her eyes and focusing on her Farsight so she could see Gregory checking her out when he thought she was looking the other way. When she would break out in a grin and Gregory asked her what was so funny she would answer "Nothing!"

Madoka was learning all sorts of things about what drew her Ashikabi's eyes and was developing a theory that he was a bit of a pervert.

Not a pervert in the sense most people used the word these days. Gregory had gone on for 15 straight minutes earlier in the evening when Madoka had, all innocent and unknowing, used the word "pervert" as a synonym for "guy who likes looking at pretty girls".

Mishi had started waving her hands warningly but it was too late, Gregory had already overheard and then launched into what was obviously a well-practiced rant about how the word "pervert" does not mean "guy who likes sex" or "guy who likes looking at girls", or any of the other ways the word was _perverted_ in its meaning these days.

He waxed almost poetic about the corruption of the language and about how it had only taken _one_ idiot Japanese-to-English translator, forty years ago, to misapply "pervert" to a manga he was being paid to translate for the American market. The usage guide the translator had been working from had that word as one of the usable terms for "dirty old man who likes looking at underage girls", or, just "dirty old man" (which _was_ a marginally acceptable translation, Gregory had to admit, as it was not and is not socially acceptable for a much older man to outright ogle _legally underage_ young women).

 _But!_ That idiot translator _then_ went and applied the word to " _any_ man who ogles young women", not just _dirty old men_! Then it began to be applied to "any man who demonstrates a desire for sex" and "anyone male _or female_ who demonstrates a desire for sex". Now, forty years later, every time someone in Japan shows a healthy interest in the opposite gender (or the same gender, for that matter) they are labeled a _pervert,_ i.e., someone who is demonstrating a _sexual perversion_.

"Wanting sex isn't a sexual perversion! Looking at pretty girls is not a sexual perversion! Looking at pretty guys isn't either, if that's your thing." By this point in the diatribe, Gregory had been pacing back and forth across the living room, gesticulating wildly with both arms, with Mishi and Madoka as his silent, horrified, audience. Well, Madoka was much less horrified than Mishi, who hated to hear her father talk about _anything_ that had even a remote connection to sex.

Mishi obviously knew this speech by heart already, which was why she had tried _desperately_ to wave Madoka off when Madoka had referred to a guy as a pervert for leering at her and Mishi. Madoka realized she would be willing to pay good money to have been a witness to the times Gregory went off on this rant to one of Mishi's boyfriends, or in the presence of one of Mishi's girlfriends from school, something Madoka was now convinced _must_ have happened, at least once, in the past.

Gregory was far too much the dedicated linguistic academic to let mere social propriety hold him back from lecturing an audience on correct word usage, especially if that social propriety was only there to keep him from embarrassing his daughter. Then it was almost a bonus!

"A pervert is someone who can't enjoy regular healthy sex; they have to have unusual, deviant, circumstances and kinks in order to get off!" Mishi groaned and buried her hands in her face at that. Gregory continued, unaware (or perhaps uncaring) of how he was amusing his Sekirei and mortifying his teenage daughter, "Unless someone's sexual behavior is truly deviant, truly degenerate, truly depraved, they are not a pervert! Pedophiles are perverts because pre-pubescent children are not healthy targets for sexual desire! Fetishists are often perverts, because if you can only get off by fapping with women's shoes on each hand, you are a pervert! Sadists are perverts! Someone who can _only_ get off while peeping on unaware women is a pervert!"

"It's _not,_ however _,_ perverted to like looking at pretty girls! Clothed, naked, or in any other state! It's **_normal_** _!_ "

Mishi had fled to bed not long after Gregory wrapped up his Pervert Rant, to Madoka's great amusement. Madoka considered this only fair, it was payback for the many times Mishi had utterly embarrassed Madoka in the early days of their friendship, when Mishi's bold, deliberate, talk of sex and body parts would inevitably cause Madoka to blush and stammer.

Happily, Mishi's new desire to be in a totally separate room from her Dad for the next ten years _did_ give Gregory and Madoka the privacy needed for talking about the Sekirei and MBI.

This also gave an excuse for Madoka to change into the aforementioned very skimpy sleepwear and put an innocent face on wanting to "comfortably" lounge around the living room with her Ashikabi. And while helping herself to most of a bottle of white wine over the course of the evening.

And yes, she'd noticed he _was_ a bit of a pervert, mostly by trial and error and by using her Farsight to cheat and observe Gregory's eyes and his attention when she was not facing him, when he _thought_ he was safe to look as much as he wanted at whatever he wanted.

She labeled him a bit of a pervert because she now suspected that her Ashikabi was more stimulated by accidental or incidental views of forbidden skin than by a full view of nakedness deliberately granted. Not that he hadn't appreciated the deliberate show of her breasts the other night, but he _initially_ had thought he was peeping on her, unaware, and that was more stimulating than if she had simply removed her shirt for him with him being fully aware of her intent.

So, she'd spent the last couple of hours lounging in her very skimpy clothes, sharing the couch with Gregory and "innocently" letting the fabric of her shorts expose glimpses of what they covered, and "innocently" ignoring her erect nipples poking out from the cotton tank top like diamond bits. When she had "innocently and absent-mindedly" used her tablet's stylus to rub a spot between her legs under the shorts, which had developed a slight itch, Gregory almost fell completely off the couch.

It took every bit of self-control Madoka had to keep from grinning ear to ear. She ended up resorting to using her Healing ability to try to lock her facial muscles into a blank expression just to keep from giving herself away.

This was fun!

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

On the serious business of MBI and the Sekirei Plan, the last few discussions they'd had were focused on the more-than-human abilities Madoka had, those that she had witnessed, and those she had heard rumor of. Gregory was insistent on coming up with proper names for everything and even though he made an effort to explain why he felt this was important, Madoka still considered it a bit of a waste of energy.

MBI did not bother with this sort of thing and _they_ were scientists and researchers who had been studying the Sekirei for twenty years. If they didn't think it was important to come up with an actual name for what Madoka could do other than "healing" then she tended to agree with them.

But it was important to her Ashikabi, so even if she didn't get it, she tried her best to cooperate. Even though wracking her memory for every little detail from her years in the MBI Sekirei Labs was difficult and frustrating, particularly with Gregory directing the questions. He had the most amazing ability to remain focused on a line of questioning. This ability was also _incredibly_ irritating! If she wandered off topic or answered a question he had not actually asked, he immediately realized it and returned the discussion back to the point he wanted. Prevaricating when Gregory was questioning you on a subject was damn near impossible, as Madoka had found out.

He was nice about it. _Kind_ even. But he didn't let you weasel out of at least telling _yourself_ the truth.

After Mishi had retreated to her room, she and Gregory spent the evening, back and forth between the living room and the patio, coming up with names for the different Sekirei abilities, which did not take nearly as long as she'd thought it would. _Farsense_ , _Creativity_ , _Psychokinesis_ , _Redaction_ , _Coercion_ , dozens of sub-categories and time spent explaining how various Sekirei abilities Madoka had witnessed could fit into the new Metapsychic categories. It was kind of fun, really. There was a sense that they were doing something that a hundred years from now people would still be influenced by. A feeling that there would be this idealized future society with colleges of metapsychics exploring the inner and outer worlds to a greater degree than anyone before, and they would be using the terms and ideas that she and Gregory were putting down on paper this night.

But that only took about an hour, as Gregory already had a great deal of the preliminary work done on building a nomenclature for the Sekirei and Ashikabi. He said he had simply gone through a dozen science fiction authors, as well as computer games and comic books, and stole everything that seemed to fit their situation. Madoka thought that the idea of high-minded super metapsychics in the future using their nomenclature, which they stole from comic books, was the funniest thing she had heard in forever.

What they spent the rest of their night on was reviewing Madoka's past in the MBI Sekirei Labs, quickly deciding to focus on her adolescence and the facts of her Post-Pubescent Group 11 life. She ended up sharing far more about her relationship with 16 Toyotama and the motivations behind it than she had intended. There was so much information Gregory managed to get from her that he resorted to recording their discussion and dialogue as audio files on his phone and her phone (always best to have two master copies of raw data, Gregory insisted) to make sure his ink pen on spiral notebook note taking did not contain any grievous errors.

Madoka learned new things about herself by the time Gregory was finished questioning her about her and her onee-sama. New things about herself that she did not particularly like.

Madoka sensed disapproval from Gregory, coming across the connection they shared as Sekirei and Ashikabi. This disapproval grew as he extracted more and more information about her life after her Puberty Adjustments. He questioned her about and took notes on why she had initiated her relationship with number 16, what methods she used to endear herself to Toyotama, why Madoka felt she needed a literal bodyguard to protect her from the other Sekirei in Group 11.

Gregory was not happy as he continued to gather more information about the nature of her relationship with Toyotama, details about how often or how rarely Madoka actually desired to do what they did together. How often did she engage in sex play with Toyotama or Ichi-chan because they wanted to, and since they wanted it Madoka made sure she was there to provide what was desired, and so that Madoka would be wanted and appreciated and valued.

Madoka started to see that she had allowed Toyotama to do whatever Toyotama wanted to do to Madoka's body and then Madoka perceived "reciprocation" as Madoka then doing to Toyotama's body what Toyotama wanted done.

When _true_ reciprocation would have been them doing what _Madoka_ wanted. But Madoka's wants were never a part of any equation, and somehow Madoka had never notice this.

Madoka had made everything about what Toyotama wanted; whether it was what Toyotama was doing to Madoka, or what Madoka was doing to Toyotama. How could she not have seen this?

She couldn't even blame her onee-sama. If Madoka herself did not recognize the one-sided nature of the relationship, a relationship that _Madoka_ had courted and that _Madoka_ had defined in almost all of its particulars, then it was pretty unlikely that Toyotama was ever aware of how grossly unbalanced their relationship had been. On the other hand, Toyotama had perhaps assumed, _reasonably_ assumed, that Madoka had set things up exactly as Madoka wanted them.

Madoka was the one who declared that Toyotama was her "onee-sama". Toyotama might have been happy with a less deferential, less submissive, girlfriend. Madoka would probably never know, but the thought had never occurred to her, in the Labs. The nature of her relationship with Toyotama was very specific and it had sprung into existence in all of its particulars almost spontaneously, and Madoka had implemented the relationship exactly as it had manifested in her mind.

There was a lot more to her relationship with Toyotama that Madoka needed to spend time thinking about. More than she had ever suspected. Before she could lay her past to rest and move on with her life, she would have to spend time reviewing this important part of her past. If she was still alive by the end of summer, she promised herself she would dedicate whatever time and effort it took to settle this upsetting history she'd not even realized she'd been carrying.

Gregory had been the one who extracted these truths from her, bit by bit, over the course of several hours. And while she could tell he was unhappy and that he disapproved, she could not tell what exactly it was he was unhappy about or what he disapproved of.

Perhaps he thought girl+girl relationships were wrong? Or maybe he did not like the idea that his Sekirei was intimate with someone before meeting him? There was a lot of talk in the dorms about remaining "pure" for your Ashikabi. But the general acceptance was that only meant avoiding girl+boy sex! But maybe that was wrong? Oh no, what it that was it?

Maybe he did not like that Madoka was so inferior in the relationship with Toyotama? Or that there were Sekirei who would take advantage of his Sekirei before he could be there to protect her?

It was confusing and frustrating for Madoka, knowing her Ashikabi was feeling clear emotions of disapproval, even anger, but not knowing what it was she'd done to cause those emotions and thus not being able to tell what to do to make them stop. She could not pick up the _cause_ of his very obvious emotions, at all, and that was going to drive her mad!

His face never changed expression from his usual study-research look, the intense brows drawn down over sharp green eyes, his somewhat thick lips pursed, all of it made for Gregory's look of concentration, what he usually wore while writing in the Notebook and asking her questions.

This untenable state of affairs caused her to return to prevaricating, which was pointless and accomplished nothing except frustrating her that much more. Gregory was going to get his answers, unless she flat out told him _no_.

He _had_ told her at the start that if she did not want to answer something, she had the right to tell him flat out, "no, I do not want to answer that question". She had stupidly declared immediately that she had no reason to hide anything at all from her Ashikabi and she would never deny him an answer to any question he might have. If he liked, she would describe in detail every sexual encounter she and Toyotama ever had!

And while that declaration had caused her Ashikabi to sputter and even blush, she soon regretted having painted herself into a corner. Now she _had_ to answer; now she couldn't use his freely offered escape hatch. Because she had so adamantly insisted she never would, before she realized just how uncomfortable some of the truths were that Gregory was uncovering.

Eventually the subject shifted away from her relationships and began delving into what she remembered of MBI's actual tests of the Sekirei and their studies of their abilities, Gregory spent a lot of his time shaking his head at how little MBI seemed to actually study the Sekirei's powers. Madoka told him she did not think MBI even knew about Farsense. Or maybe they knew that some of the Sekirei could see around corners and some could whisper to another Sekirei without using their voices, but they never listed any of the Farsense abilities on evaluations, it was never asked about in interviews or during Adjustments, it was simply a non-issue in the MBI Sekirei Labs. The Farsense metafaculty seemed to not interest MBI at all, which baffled Gregory intensely, considering the possible application in corporate espionage for MBI's benefit, at the _very_ least. And what about science for the sake of science? How does any scientist worth the title just ignore _demonstrable clairvoyance_? It was mind-boggling. What _did_ all of those Researchers and Lab Techs spend all these years _doing_?

If it did not have to do with fighting, specifically one on one formalized duels between Sekirei, it seemed MBI did not care about it. And that distressed Gregory greatly.

By the time midnight had rolled around, Madoka was of the opinion he should have gone into interrogation instead of teaching.

Now he was writing in the Notebook, sitting at the other end of the couch, illuminated by a table lamp. Madoka studied his face in profile, noting the fatigue that showed itself in lines around his eyes and his mouth. Fatigue or stress; it was hard for her to say which.

He had a very prominent nose. It was straight, not hooked, and kind of shaped like a triangle in profile. Was it a big nose or a strong nose? She wondered which of those two she would have used to describe it two weeks ago and which she would use today.

Gregory had asked her earlier that evening to start keeping a journal of sorts, on her phone if she liked, on paper if she preferred. She liked tapping stuff out on her phone; it gave her practice with the little keypad and she envied Mishi her amazing speed and accuracy in texting. Gregory had asked her to write down the things she felt. Especially how she felt last week, before her winging, to the best of her memory. She was a little reluctant to do so, and he could tell, so he assured her that whatever she wrote in the journal he would not be reading, but instead his "research assistant" would be going over those notes. The only way he would see those notes would be if she and his research assistant agreed he should see them at a later date.

He did not have a research assistant, Madoka promptly pointed out.

He laughed and kept making notes in his Notebook. "I will. You can bet your sweet ass on that, Mado. I will."

She enjoyed the warmth in her belly that came from her Ashikabi calling her ass "sweet". She also realized he meant that he may not have an assistant today, but the work he was doing would need one someday so that person would be who was reviewing what she might write. He explained that this was so she would feel free to be more honest in what she recorded and he stressed how important that was.

He took her by the hand, looked into her eyes, and earnestly asked her to write down everything she could remember, even things that she didn't like to admit now, things she might think would upset him or Mishi or anyone else, whatever it was she thought and felt before winging, _write it down_.

So she had just finished methodically tapping out everything she remembered of her thoughts about Gregory O'Donnell. She'd had to erase what she had typed several times, realizing she had been whitewashing the truth without realizing it, something Gregory warned her would likely happen. She made a real effort to write the blunt, hard, truth, exactly as she remembered it.

She looked, now, at the face of her Ashikabi, back lit by the lamp near the couch. He was focused and intent on what he was writing in the Notebook, unaware of her studying his features. The feelings and opinions she had two weeks ago when she first met Gregory O'Donnell were now newly refreshed in her memory, so she studied the face that she had looked at two weeks ago and had then immediately categorized as "old American guy", as "another old pervert", because he had been staring at her face. She remembered being relieved when he had finally turned his eyes away from her.

She had made a note that now, two weeks later, she felt cold and a bit lonely any time those same green eyes were _not_ looking her way.

She also had some kinda first-hand/second-hand understanding of why he might stare at her face, having now seen what her face looked like through his eyes. At least, a fantasy-memory of her face. _Now_ she was more inclined to wonder at how he could ever _stop_ looking rather than wonder why he was looking in the first place.

Now when she looked at him she still saw the lines on his face, but now those lines and fine creases meant worry for his family and for her. She still _saw_ the slightly saggy skin along his jawline but now she did not _care_ about it. She saw the thin hair atop his head and the hairline that was well back from his high forehead but it no longer seemed to matter. Now it was just Gregory's slightly greying, receding, blond hair. Before, it had been a big red sign blinking "old guy, old guy, disqualified, avoid".

Her eyes lingered on his lips, again observing that they were a bit large for a man's lips, almost pouty. She did not think he would appreciate that description, which thought made her grin. She thought about how his lips felt on hers.

She gave a start when he slapped the Notebook shut then turned to look at her. He gave her that crooked grin he had, and said, "Really, it's late, we'd all best get off to bed, Mado. Tomorrow is Saturday so in the morning I have my English as a Second Language Course. If you want to get a ride with me, get up early. If you want to stay here with Mishi instead, that's alright too. Though, between you and me, I expect she intends on smuggling Tomo over tomorrow morning while I'm off at Saturday school and since Karen is wherever Karen is. So it might be uncomfortable here for you as the two of them likely intend on private time in the bedroom. Me, I just pretend that she is cleverly fooling me. Oh, and for the love of God remind me we need to put some time aside to do some detailed tests on your Farsense metafaculty, okay?"

" _Tomorrow is the two week anniversary of when I met you,"_ the thought drifted through Madoka's tired mind. "Okay, Gregory. And I will catch a ride with you, yes. It will give me a chance to get out of the apartment and I need to try to get word back to the MBI Sekirei Labs, to Yosuga, so I will be working on that tomorrow."

"Okay, but be careful, Mado."

"Of course! And you promise we will stop for donuts, yes? Before your class?" She stood from the couch, being careful to be _subtle_ about posing in her very-barely-there sleep clothing. She collected her phone and put the tablet away, up on the shelf over the computer desk, where it belonged. Well, maybe stretching up on her tip toes as high as she could reach in order to put the tablet away was a _little_ obvious.

Turning towards the bedroom, she looked out of the side of her eye to see the effect she'd had on her Ashikabi.

Totally worth it.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Saturday 28 December, 2019

By noon the next day, when Gregory finished his Saturday ESL class, a steady rain had settled in over Shin Tokyo. The weather app on his cell-watch told him it would likely continue through Sunday morning and a glance outside at the dull grey skies confirmed that as a good bet.

As he left the classroom that was set aside for Saturday adult education classes Gregory noticed that his pretty little Sekirei was waiting for him in the hallway. "Hello, Mado-chan. Riding back to the apartment with me then?"

"Yes, please, Gregory-kun. It is a little bit rainy outside." Madoka gave him her slight, reserved, smile (so very different from her " _10,000 watt Resistance Is Futile_ ®"smile, but still lovely) then fell into step beside him as they walked towards the double doors of the main entrance for the school. It was dim in the school's hallway, with only every fourth overhead light turned on and the glass doors at the end letting in only a little light, thanks to the rainstorm. Gregory carried his briefcase in his left hand; his right was resting in his pants pocket, which provided a convenient elbow for Madoka to grasp as she walked closely alongside him on his right.

Without conscious thought, and as soon as Madoka took his arm, Gregory shortened his normally long strides and Madoka lengthened her steps. Neither noticed their immediate synchronicity.

They walked in silence down the long corridor. Once at the doors, Gregory nodded to the security guard who was at his desk nearby and held the door for Madoka. The rain was really coming down. The covered walkway that led towards the parking lot was, thankfully, wide enough to keep them dry as Madoka took Gregory's arm again and the two of them slowly walked.

"Any luck coming up with a way to get word to your friend in the MBI Sekirei Labs?" Gregory asked.

Madoka nodded her head, even the damp air was unable to keep her thick blonde hair from swinging about. "I hope so. I had the full names of two of the lab techs who worked in the Group 11 dorms over this last year and I have been working on finding them. Today I finally found both of their phone numbers and contacted them. Hopefully at least one of the two will be kind enough to slip my cell number to Yosu-chan."

Gregory nodded, "That really is probably your best bet. Staking out MBI's downtown headquarters won't do any good, as the Sekirei are released all around the city and at random times. You know, Yosuga might already be released for all we know."

"Oh, I hope not, Gregory-kun. And with only three to six of us being released each week, and already two of us that I know of for sure having been released out of Group 11, three if we count 86 Katsuragi, we can hope Yosu-chan will be one of the later released Sekirei. All I can do is hope, I do not have any, what was the term you used... leverage? Yes, leverage, to apply to either of these young men, so I and Yosu-chan are completely dependent upon their good will. And good will was not a particularly valued trait in the MBI hiring processes, as far as we could ever tell."

Gregory could tell Madoka was putting a lot of hope into this, so he agreed easily. "It doesn't hurt to hope, Mado-chan. A positive attitude almost always helps and rarely hurts."

His gorgeous blonde Sekirei looked up at him, having to tilt her head back quite a bit to meet his eyes, and she smiled her radiant smile up at him, weakening his knees and setting his heart to racing, as it always did. "Exactly, Gregory-kun. A positive attitude. That is my motto now. I will have faith that we will find Yosu-chan and we will help her find her Ashikabi and she will avoid the terrible things that have happened to some of the Sekirei, out in the city."

Gregory smiled down at Madoka where she held onto his arm and replied, "Good! See, no reason to sulk about and assume the worst. And perhaps we could put our heads together and come up with more leverage for you to use than you think you have. You know, this project with trying to reach number 44 clearly illustrates how nice it would be if _we_ had some way to find just-released Sekirei. If we could contact them immediately upon their release from the MBI Sekirei Labs and warn them about all the things MBI is failing to educate them about, and help put them on the right path to finding their Ashikabi, it would save a lot of misery. God only knows how many have already been forcibly winged by bad men or who've had to accept an Ashikabi that was not the best match for them, like you had to, from simple, avoidable mistakes. Unforced errors, as they're called."

The two stopped walking, as they had reached the end of the covered walkway, at the back section of the school parking lot where Gregory parked the Jeep. Both were looking out into the heavy rain at the small, mostly empty, parking lot, Madoka's hand was still holding Gregory's right arm.

They stood quietly for a short time, both enjoying the sound of the steady downpour and the feeling that they were protected and sheltered, even if their shelter was only this 2 meter wide covered walkway, they both felt protected and sheltered in the others presence. Though it was unlikely either would describe it in those words, especially Gregory.

Madoka was looking at Gregory's orange Jeep and the two parking spots that he had to pay for, by the order of the school's facilities manager, in order to park it in the school's lot. The American sized vehicle was simply too large to fit easily in Japanese sized car slots. Madoka watched the heavy rain as it pooled atop the flat canvas roof of the unusual vehicle, then she spoke, softly, but easily heard by her Ashikabi. "Gregory-kun, I do not think it is the worst thing at all, being your Sekirei. Please do not think that I regret this fate or that I spend my time wishing that things could be different."

Gregory continued watching the rainstorm and considered Madoka's words carefully, both what she had said and what she had not. He doubted if she had felt so accepting of her fate, of her new Ashikabi, the night their bond had established, the night of her winging. He wondered if she had been told the day they met that he would end up being her Ashikabi, would Madoka be so accepting of her fate as she seemed now? He suspected she would not have been.

The vague outlines of a hypothesis had been coming together in his mind over the last couple of days; a hypothesis concerning the nature of the bond and what effects it had on the Sekirei. He still did not have it clear enough in his head to write it down but he felt that soon he might have enough data to start making some educated guesses.

As far as what Madoka had said, he understood that "do not think it is the worst thing" would probably be considered _damning with faint praise_ to a lot of people, but he thought he knew Madoka well enough now to hear her words for the kindness she very likely intended. It was true; _he_ regretted the necessity that tied Madoka to such a man as himself even as he confessed that he selfishly enjoyed the attention.

At least Madoka was trying to reassure him that she was not completely unhappy about how things had turned out.

"Wait here, Mado-chan. I'll go fetch the Jeep and pull it up next to the walkway here so you won't get soaked in the cold rain." Gregory handed her his briefcase. "Do please guard briefcase-san with great care. It would be tragic if he were to get soaked in this downpour."

His silliness was rewarded with Madoka's soft, reserved, laugh. "I will do so, Gregory-kun. Briefcase-san is safe with me."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory stood at the small breakfast bar that separated the kitchen and the living room of the O'Donnell's apartment. The stack of photographs he had been flipping through was now just scattered about the bar top. The letter, typed and printed instead of handwritten, was in his hands. He was staring at it, though he had already read it through, twice.

The photos were all date stamped and the location of each clearly marked on the back. All of them featuring himself and Madoka at various places over the last two weeks; eating lunch, drinking coffee on the patio at Starbucks, even, shockingly, the two of them standing with her hand on the crook of his arm, under the covered walkway at the school, not one hour past. Gregory would bet that the private investigator Karen had obviously hired had been extremely disappointed to never catch him and Madoka at a Love Hotel or any other incriminating location, preferably some place he would get photos of a less than clothed Madoka in the midst of incriminating activities.

What were the odds that a 40-year-old husband of twenty years would _not_ be sleeping with the gorgeous idol-like girl with the DD tits, especially given that the two spend all their spare time together?

He wondered if Karen was disappointed that her private investigator had failed to get such photos? She probably was. She had very likely built up this entire picture in her mind of what had been going on behind her back and it was probably a bitter disappointment to her that her private investigator's best efforts were a photo of Madoka with her hand on the crook of Gregory's jacket covered elbow as he semi-escorted her along a wet, slippery, concrete walkway.

Gregory had no doubt that Karen was livid that that was the worst, the most "incriminating", photo they could acquire. Gregory's diaphragm muscle spasmed and air managed to croak past his throat. No one recognized the grotesque sound as a chuckle, not even Gregory's own subconscious, which had given the order.

"… _knew you were lying about her being Michelle's friend from school_ _…"_

"… _and there are_ _no record of any Sanjunana Madoka at Michelle's school_ _…"_

"… _for two weeks I gave you every chance to tell me the truth or to get her out of our home_ _. "_

Yes, he could tell that Karen had unquestionably built up this story in her head of what was "really going on". Gregory felt bad about that. _Very_ bad. He couldn't even carry on an affair properly. No wonder Karen was finally sick to death of him.

It was _his_ damn fault that Karen had nothing significant to show for the efforts she'd made. She did everything right, hired the private investigator, told the fellow how to follow Gregory, where Gregory tended to be. Gregory should do something to fix at least that part of this.

" _You made it clear where your priorities are_ _…"_

"… _r eturning to New Hampshire. I will stay with my parents there until_ _…"_

A hot flash distracted Gregory badly, as it made cold sweat prickle his skin from head to toe.

His entire previous train of thought vanished from his mind entirely, just before he could put into action his plan of turning to Madoka and asking her to suck his dick for a photo he needed so he could fix his marriage.

His mind spun onward. Gregory realized he was starting to lose it. A bit of a lump was in his throat and his eyes were watery with the threat of tears.

If Karen had been suspicious enough to hire a private investigator to tail him or tail Madoka, as well as check the school's attendance records for Madoka's name, then it was quite a bit clearer why Karen was so angry all week. And clearer yet why she had insisted he be the one who kicked Madoka out.

If she had known that he had lied to her about who Madoka was from the start and lied about why she was staying with them, then every day for the last two weeks had been just another nail in the coffin of his marriage as far as Karen was concerned. Every day had been a chance for him to come clean and tell her the truth and let her know what was going on and she waited and watched as every day he chose to keep lying to her.

He'd only meant to help the girl, she'd looked like she was freezing.

"… _not sure what sort of fool you have let yourself become_ _…"_

Well, one small bright spot in all this; the investigator had no idea about 86 Katsuragi and the events of December 19th. God only knew what MBI's response would be if Karen knew the truth about the Sekirei and was threatening to take off for the States. As it was, Karen figured Gregory was the foolish victim of some sort of con job, with Madoka intending to manipulate her way into accessing whatever assets the O'Donnell's might have.

At least Karen was honest about having cleaned out their savings accounts and that she had insured that all of their investments and accounts now required both of their signatures in order to be liquidated or transferred. He had access to the household checking account, where his paycheck was automatically deposited, and that was it.

"… _be damned if some whore is going to get away with my life's savings because you are having a mid-life crisis_ _…"_

Really, it was a completely fair assumption, and Gregory _was_ very upset that his wife of 20 years had left him, to return to the States, leaving him here to… what, carry on as a separated-from-his-wife, middle-aged, Western, ex-patriate?

But that didn't make sense! Gregory frowned, trying very hard to crack this mystery. But no matter how he turned it, it made no sense at all. If Gregory really _were_ separated-but-can't-divorce-because-we're-Catholic and living as an ex-patriate in Asia, he would be having his dick sucked ten times a day by gorgeous Thai girls on the beaches of Phuket, Thailand.

He wouldn't still be in Japan. That's just silly.

"… _will be staying at a rental until my transfer is approved, a few weeks at the most. I will be taking our daughter with me; she does not deserve to be caught up in your stupidity_ _…"_

 _That_ was not going to go well. Mishi loved it here, loved her school, her friends, her boyfriend. He wondered how quickly Karen would begin regretting that decision. He'd already checked the apartment; most of Mishi's clothes were gone and some of her other personal possessions were gone from her room, though much remained, such as her fish tank and her two goldfish. The room showed every sign of having been packed by someone who was very angry. Gregory figured that Karen must have arrived at the apartment from her overnight stay with her co-worker, Miss Hashimoto, right after he left for school that morning. Karen had likely told Mishi to pack and that Mishi had to go with her to whatever temporary rental arrangements Karen had.

Gregory wondered how difficult it had been to convince Mishi to cooperate at all. Gregory would bet money that Karen had not mentioned anything about taking Mishi back to New Hampshire. Otherwise, she would have had to tie the girl up to get her to go along.

He glanced at his cell watch, noticed there were no calls and no texts and no emails. Which meant Karen had probably taken Mishi's phone, wherever they were. Karen did not want Mishi warning him of what was going on, likely, so she had cut off Mishi's communications.

He thought about Mishi's spring semester that was starting next week, how difficult it would be for her to transfer to an American school at this point. How angry she would be with both of her parents for putting her through a relocation, against her wishes. He could not blame Mishi; she had every right to be as angry as she no doubt was.

Tears were now slicking Gregory's cheeks, making it difficult to read the sentence Karen had written where she notified him she was taking his wonderful Mishi-chan back to New Hampshire. Mishi would be very mad at him for allowing this to happen. And that was fair; it _was_ his fault this had happened to her. Gregory had little hope that he would ever be able to convince her to forgive him if she ended up back in New Hampshire because of this.

He tried to wipe the tears out of his eyes but more kept flowing out.

"… _I will be taking our daughter with me; she does not deserve to be caught up in your stupidity_ …"

Gregory had little hope that he would ever be able to convince her to forgive him if she ended up back in New Hampshire because of this. Moreover, thinking about Mishi-chan, Gregory knew he had little hope that he would ever be able to convince her to forgive him if she ended up back in New Hampshire because of this. And, even worse, when it came to the situation with Mishi, Gregory had little hope that he would ever be able to convince her to forgive him if...

A blue tinged zorch of pain shot through the middle of his forehead, through his brain, and then out the back of his head. He would normally be curious as to what might have caused such a singular sensation but he was really too busy. He did try to whimper in recognition of the pain but even that was denied him. There was that thing. You know, the thing with the thing, that was blocking any air or blood or semen from moving around in his body.

But the pain, or the memory of it, forced him to move his head and that seemed to give him a different perspective.

 _Irrevocable_. That was the perfect English word for weather like today. He should make sure to work that into his lessons. It was an _irrevocable_ sort of day. He would never have back the daughter that he'd had _just yesterday_. He would give a lot to overhear, just once, a graduate of the School of Hard Knocking You On Your Ass use "irrevocable" in a pointless mispronounced utterance that had no significant effect on returning Gregory's daughter to him.

The Sekirei Plan had cost him his daughter.

MBI had cost him his daughter.

Hiroto Minaka had just now, this very day, Saturday, December 28th 2019 A.D., cost Gregory Daire O'Donnell the devoted love of Gregory's only daughter, Michelle Lee O'Donnell.

The Sekirei cost him his daughter.

"Hrk…" An alarming, choking, sound penetrated the silence of the apartment.

Hiroto Minaka cost him his daughter.

MBI was responsible for the loss of his daughter.

Gregory believed he might kill everyone who worked for MBI. It would take a long time, it was a large company after all. But if he worked hard and took his vitamins he could probably manage it.

"Hrk…hrk…" Someone nearby was suffering profound respiratory distress. Gregory wished they would kindly shut the fuck up. That wasn't too much to ask, was it?

"Gregory-kun?" His mind didn't register the other, shaky, scared, female, voice coming from behind him.

That all of this had been inevitable, from the moment he'd kissed Madoka and had been pulled into the Sekirei Plan, was no comfort.

Kissing Madoka had cost him his daughter.

He would never have the love of his daughter back, because of Sekirei 01's failure to perform her duty.

"Hrk…"

Perhaps he should kill the person standing nearby who was making that irritating noise. He could squeeze them until they stopped making noises.

He could squeeze Minaka's neck until the man died. That would be for the best. And if he did that, that maddening hrking sound might stop too.

"… _cannot believe you would do this_ _…"_

"… _why would you throw away twenty years_ _…"_

"Hrk…"

A tremulous voice repeating his name came to him from behind him. "Gregory-kun? I am very sorry…"

Gregory vaguely heard someone answer the Sekirei. "Leave me alone, Madoka-san."

"… _I knew you were lying_ _…"_

Gregory recognized that somehow he was now kneeling on the floor, beside the breakfast bar, the letter in his hands. He fell over, catching himself with his hands, remaining there on his hands and knees, mouth open and trying to breathe. Tears were dripping from the tip of his nose and snot was leaking from his nostrils to mix with the spit covering his chin.

"… _gave you every chance_ _…"_

Every handful of seconds Gregory's lungs would try to pull air in through his mouth but his throat was closed and would not let anything through.

"… _lying about her_ _…"_

"Hrk… hrk…"

"… _knew you were lying_ _…"_

There was this huge… _knot_ in his chest, so great and solid that he couldn't breathe around it. As though every muscle in his body was tensed as hard as they could be but all of them were right in the middle of his chest.

A sob tore itself out of that knot of pain and forced its way up and out his mouth, leaving what felt like shredded and bleeding flesh in his throat. He held himself up with one hand on the carpet, his other hand held the letter, crumpled, pressed against the pain in his chest, his eyes screwed shut in a vain effort to shut out reality.

A second sob got through the painful tightness in his throat.

"Gregory-kun? Please…"

"Just leave me the fuck alone, goddamnit! Go away!"

Gregory did not hear the door shut, or Madoka's retreating footsteps, or the rain which still fell from the leaden skies over Shin Tokyo.

He fell over onto his side, still clutching the letter to his chest, as more sobs came, slowly tearing away at the tension and pain in his chest.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 _ **Terminology and Conceptual Framework**_

From talking at length to Madoka about the 'research' staff at MBI and what she had spoken with them about, or overhead them saying, over the years she was there, it seems there was no commonly used terminology, no lexicon, not even a conceptual framework for designating the Sekirei more-than-human abilities. Madoka says they just called her ability 'healing'. They described 16 Toyotama's abilities as 'strong'.  
Madoka says the trick to Farsight was a "secret" among the girls in Group 11 that they would share with some of the other Sekirei who were assigned to Group 11 and there was every indication that MBI did not even care about this sort of ability, if they knew about it at all.  
I find it utterly bewildering that any actual scientist would not have, at the very least, defined and categorized these aliens and their abilities. Attempting to discuss these more-than-human traits while calling them "powers" is simply not serious.  
I suspect that early on in the study of the Sekirei, Hiroto Minaka experienced some disaster which drove him mad, and from that point onward his behavior became erratic and irrational, directing the bulk of MBI's resources and efforts away from scientific study and classification and towards conditioning the maturing Sekirei to participate in his "Sekirei Plan".  
As _any_ terminology is better than none, I will use what conceptual framework I can cobble together from various sources: fiction, academic, and speculative, and I will work on producing a lexicon for the terminology we use.  
As we go forward with observation and documentation, any observed facts that do not fit our terminology or framework will require us to adjust the terminology and the framework.

 ** _We will dedicate extra effort to avoid forcing the observed facts to fit the terminology; instead, we will adapt the terminology to fit the newest observed facts._**

(Some definitions updated and modified later than the date marked on this entry, as defining and classifying metapsychic abilities correctly is an ongoing project.)

...

 **Term - Metapsychic Abilities:** As these more-than-human abilities need some overall designation other than "powers" I've chosen to refer to them as "metapsychic abilities", "metafunctions", and "metafaculties". Like many of the terms that I have selected these are from the speculative academic papers of Professor Dennis Remillard of Dartmouth, with whom I have corresponded at length since December 19th 2019. Other terms and labels are from fiction that featured such things, notably the science fiction works of Julian May. So far, I have maintained enough distance and vagueness in my discussions with Professor Remillard that MBI should not object, but this cannot likely continue for much longer.

...

 **Terms for Degrees of Metapsychic Abilities**

 **Operant** – Metapsychic abilities are present and available for conscious, controlled, use.

 **Latent** – Metapsychic ability is present but cannot be used deliberately or consistently. May manifest as exceptional mundane characteristics and skills (i.e., a powerful latent Creator might be a naturally gifted engineer or mechanic).  
We have an early hypothesis that all Earth-born operant and latent metapsychics are descended, to some degree, from early Sekirei insertions into Earth societies.

 **Inoperant** – Without any metapsychic abilities or the potential for them.

...

 **Terms for Category of Metapsychic Abilities**

 **Psychokinesis** – The ability to move mass by metapsychic effort rather than physical effort.

 **Creation** – Ability to manipulate energy and/or matter. This may take the form of seeming control over fire or electricity, the ability to create illusions. It may also be, in a subconscious form, the power that makes the Sekirei physical form more durable and resistant to damage than human bodies. Madoka reports the Sekirei are no more resistant to injury while sleeping or unconscious than a human and that a Sekirei can have hypodermic needles penetrate their skin with no more difficulty than a human's skin if the Sekirei is cooperative, implying there is a certain conscious metapsychic ability behind those who are resistant to combat damage.

 **Farsense** – The ability to sense at ranges and in conditions beyond normal human limits, both micro and macro. The ability to speak at a distance, or 'telepathy' would fall under this category as well. Farspeak, Farsight, Farsense. The ability to shield their minds from accidentally broadcasting emotions and thoughts is also a characteristic of the Farsense metafunction. From limited observation, it seems all operant metapsychics have some operant Farsense capability, enough to use 'mindspeech' at least, _if they are aware of the metafunction_. The range varies by the strength of the Farsensor.  
Mindspeech from undisciplined and/or untrained operants can be difficult to understand and seems disagreeable to more experienced, disciplined, and trained operants, much like listening to 'baby talk' would be to an adult.  
In addition, whether an operant has their 'shields' up or not appears obvious to any operant that 'looks'. Most latents are known to have shields as well, some at very strong levels. This is common enough that simply checking for any degree of mental shielding has been a mostly reliable method of determining if a subject has latent metapsychic abilities or is inoperant.  
Note: Not all operant metapsychics appear aware they can use Farspeech with other operants.

 **Coercion** (Note - multiple updates to the definitions of this metafunction have been made since the initial entry on 12/26/19) – The ability to mentally command another to perform actions. This may take the form of convincing the target they wish to perform the action or literally force them against their will to act. This ability is included due to the great number of Sekirei who would appear to have some form of it at a latent level, manifesting itself as charisma and sex appeal, allowing the Sekirei to have far higher success rates in manipulating the people around them, consciously or not.  
If there are any Sekirei who have manifested the operant form of this ability they need to be identified as soon as possible as they would be a profound danger to everyone else if they did not have a great deal of ethical education and moral strength.

 **Redaction** (Note - multiple updates to the definitions of this metafunction have been made since the initial entry on 12/26/19) – The ability to heal, which seems to include the ability to heal damage and trauma of the mind as well as the body. While Farsense allows an operant metapsychic to communicate with other operant metapsychics with 'mindspeech', Redactors have the ability to delve into the minds of operant, latent, and inoperant persons. They can read the memories and thoughts if they can delve deeply enough, and they may be able to modify what they find, as well, in order to heal (or cause) mental and emotional trauma. It would seem this ability has a very limited range (requiring touch in most cases) and is slow to engage, making it less than useful in a combat situation.  
This ability seems as rare as Coercion, thankfully.  
Madoka confirms that an Operant's mental shields, which are a function of the Farsense metafaculty, and which can be enhanced if the target has Redact or even Coercion, will block a Redactor's efforts to access their mind. But the Redaction metafunction seems particularly powerful in assaulting or evading shielding, compared to Farsense or even Coercion. We can only speculate at this stage, but we assume this is so the Redactor Healer who needs to access a damaged or disturbed Operant mind will have the tools to get past their mental shielding. Otherwise little healing could truly be done.  
We were also able to confirm, through Madoka's encounter with another Sekirei on 25 Jan 2020, that the "healing" metafunction is what is used to modify or affect the thoughts and memories of a target. One assumes the original purpose of this ability was to heal injuries of the mind and emotional trauma, which is why the "healer" metapsychic has this ability.

 **Sekirei Exceptional Physical Feats** – The ability to lift great weights, leap extreme distances, move at great speeds, these may be a category of metapsychic ability as well. I _suspect_ that these feats have little or nothing to do with the actual muscles and nerves of the Sekirei and are in fact a manifestation of a zero-range/internal only form of PK (psychokinesis), but without additional Sekirei to evaluate it is impossible to do more than speculate.

...

 **Terms for Metapsychic Strength Ratings**

At some point detailed and specific tests and evaluations will no doubt be established for rating the "strength" of each metapsychic's operant metafaculties. That there are ranges of capability and potential seems unquestionable, though more observation needs to be done on this subject. Tentatively we are utilizing the following rankings:

 **Novice**

 **Adept**

 **Master**

 **Grand Master**

 **Paramount Grand Master**

What qualifies an operant to which rankings in the metafaculties they can manifest is extremely subjective at this early stage of study. One expects practitioners of the various metafunctions will, some day, establish benchmarks for defining when someone is worthy of a particular ranking.

In discussions with 37 Madoka, who seems to have a higher than typical ability with the Farsense metafunction and is an operant Redactor, she claims to be able to evaluate the strength of any Sekirei she observes, if given even a few seconds to concentrate on the subject. I've directed her to begin keeping notes on every Sekirei and Ashikabi we encounter as far as their metapsychic strength levels are concerned and any other information she can perceive about them.

...

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o.0.O.0.o

* * *

Started Oct 9 2014  
Finished Oct 13 2014  
Final Edits May 12 2015  
Posted May 16 2015


	7. Bk2 - Ch3 Adjusting

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 2.3 – Ch 7 Adjusting

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Saturday, December 28th, 2019

Gregory O'Donnell was lying on the floor of his living room, staring at nothing, thinking of nothing. This blank respite had finally come after some unknown time had passed where all he could think about were memories of him and his wife, Karen. The two of them with their newborn son Mark, with their daughter, Mishi. When they bought their first house, when Karen got her first executive position at the Red Cross, when the two of them graduated college in spite of having a two-year-old son to care for. Their first dog they owned together, cute adorable little Benji, who had died of cancer and had devastated Karen so badly, fifteen years ago now.

Now he was tired of thinking. Now he felt empty. And it was good. An empty that is a relief by comparison to being full of pain. Other thoughts than pain were finally being allowed some time in his mind, thoughts like how thirsty he was. Thoughts like _"Where is Madoka?"_

He then remembered yelling at the girl, telling her to leave him alone, to go away. Empty and emotionally drained or not, he felt shame for having done that, yelling at the young Sekirei girl, who had probably never been yelled at by someone she depended on, someone she trusted. He tried to remember what he had said.

" _Just leave me the fuck alone, goddamnit! Go away!"_

Gregory sighed, but still did not move from where he lay, on his side, on the floor. Getting up in order to get a drink to soothe his sore throat would mean facing the world. Facing the world meant facing his fuckups and having to try to fix them.

He could ignore being thirsty.

And… now he had to pee.

Gregory sighed again. _"Well, damn."_

As Gregory washed his face in the sink, he tried to kick-start his brain into working but it wasn't happening. After a drink of water, and relieving the hydrostatic pressure in his bladder, he was starting to feel a bit more human.

He saw the photos on the breakfast bar countertop, from Karen's private investigator. He stacked them all and tossed them into a desk drawer, with the printed note from Karen. He could not do anything about that right now so there was no point in dwelling on it. He had to get ahold of himself, stop dwelling on what he couldn't do anything about, and look at what he might be able to fix, now.

What he needed to do first was find out where Madoka had gone after he had shouted at her. Might she excuse him if he pointed out that he had been in the middle of a breakdown and shouldn't be held accountable?

At least his mind felt clear now. It had gotten pretty bad there for a bit.

Gregory hoped the last few hours represented a unique experience. As opposed to one that might be repeated in any aspect at all.

The rain was still steadily pouring down, giving every hint that it would continue doing so through the rest of the day and on through the night. It was cold, too, though not freezing, thankfully. Gregory was starting to really worry about where Madoka might have gone. She was, no doubt, upset when she left, thanks to him. Well, probably more "madder than hell" than just "upset", but still, it was his fault.

Checking the map app on his phone for where Madoka's phone was, he hoped she'd had it in her pocket when she had left. Gregory noticed that it had been just over two hours since he and Madoka had arrived at the apartment from his Saturday class.

When her phone showed up on the map as being at the apartment, he started worrying a bit more. If she had left her phone with her purse and if she had run off without either of them…

Gregory grabbed the keys to the Jeep, pulled an umbrella from the hall closet, and then headed out to see if he could find his Sekirei.

As soon as he opened the front door he saw the rain-soaked and shivering girl, sitting against the outside wall of the O'Donnell's apartment, a couple of meters from the front door. She looked up as soon as Gregory opened the door, tears streaming down her face, complete misery written in her expression. He did not know how long she'd been there, but she had certainly been weeping for some time, judging by her puffy eyes and red nose.

In a choked and strained voice, she immediately beseeched, "Ashikabi-sama, please do not make me leave. Please! I am so sorry, please forgive me!"

"Say again?"

To Gregory's shock and distress, Madoka turned towards him and knelt dogeza, prostrating herself with her forehead on the wet concrete of the walkway. Her shoulders were shaking from crying and likely from being soaking wet in the cold rain. He tossed the umbrella back into the apartment and hurried over to Madoka, taking her arm with one hand, the other going around her waist as he pulled her to her feet as gently as he could.

"Oh my God… Mado-chan, please, come inside. Come on, inside, I'm not mad at you, you do not need forgiveness for anything. Come on, let's get you out of the cold wind and get you a towel." Gregory practically carried the girl into the apartment; her legs were too shaky to hold her up. He did not want to think how long she had been kneeling next to the wall, but it was at least long enough for her wet jeans to cut off the circulation to her lower legs.

"I am so sorry Ashikabi-sama, I am so sorry, please do not make me leave, please, I will do anything, please do not make me leave, I will be anyone you want me to be, I promise, I swear it, please just do not make me leave…" Madoka kept crying, her normally soft voice was raspy from tears and the cold. Her face was turned up to look at him as he mostly carried her into the apartment; her anguish was so intense and obvious that it broke his heart. Yeah, there was something profoundly evil that had been done to these girls. And if it took the rest of his life, Gregory would find some way to cure them of it.

Gregory shut the apartment door behind him with a foot, and then led Madoka to take a seat on one of the dining table chairs. His heart sunk even lower, tears gathering in his own eyes, self-recrimination managing to find more fuel to burn even after he thought he could not possibly feel any worse.

He wrapped a clean, dry, towel around Madoka's shoulders and handed her another one to dry her face. Dropping to one knee next to the chair, he said, in Japanese in spite of being in the apartment, "I'm going to start a pot of tea, Mado-chan. I'll be right here. It's okay, no one is making you leave, I promise."

When she just started crying harder, Gregory squeezed her shoulder and waited to see if she would say anything. She buried her face in the towel he had handed her, shoulders shaking from sobs.

Gregory could only say, "I'm just going to make some hot tea for you, Mado-chan. Try to dry your hair, okay?"

Gregory stood and went to the kitchen, pouring water into the teapot, looking for the tea strainer. His shoulders were slumped and his head bowed; he felt as though there was a thousand pounds of weight on his back. He had to fix this; it was his fault his Sekirei was crying her heart out at his dining room table.

He was not exactly sure _why_ she was so distraught, but he fully acknowledged it was his fault. She was not in the same condition she was in two weeks ago when he found her. Now she had her ID and MBI card, plus several million yen in cash and a good phone that she knew how to use. And two weeks of education on living in the world of 21st century Japan. But she hadn't grabbed her purse and cash stash and left when he had yelled at her; instead she had huddled outside in the cold, becoming convinced what had happened was _her_ fault.

He knew her situation was his fault. Just as it was his fault that Karen and Mishi were living in a short-term rental apartment across the city until they could return to New Hampshire. It was his fault Mishi was likely cursing his name for being the reason she was going to have to move to the States and transfer to a school she had no friends at, the reason she would have to leave her friends and her boyfriend.

Well, it was MBI's, Hiroto Minaka's, possibly Sekrei 01's, and possibly other agents of MBI's fault _first_. Then the remaining fault fell to him before any of it touched his Sekirei or his daughter.

Both hands on the stove to hold himself up against the weight he felt pressing him down, Gregory watched the teapot slowly heat up with only the sound of Madoka's crying filling the room. "Mado-chan, you don't have to leave, I promise," Gregory said again, still leaning on the stove and staring at the teapot.

He turned his head to look at the blonde girl, who was still crying her heart out. The sight of her sitting there with her face in her hands, bent over almost in half, the towel he had placed over her shoulders having slid half off onto the floor, tore at him. He did not think he had ever seen anyone so despondent about anything in his whole life.

Straightening his shoulders and shaking off the weariness that was pressing down on him, Gregory closed the couple of meters between the stove and her chair, took a knee in front of her, wrapped her up in his arms, and then hugged the little blonde Sekirei to his chest, murmuring what he hoped were reassuring words. "I'm so sorry Mado-chan. I should not have yelled at you. It was not your fault, I promise. It was my fault, not yours, don't feel like it was your fault, it was mine, I promise. I'm very sorry for yelling at you, and I don't want you to leave."

She clutched at him, her hands gripping his shirt tightly, pressing her face against his chest, as she cried.

"I'll never want you to leave, Mado-chan."

She hiccoughed then asked, through her tears, "Do, do, you promise, Greg…or…ry-kun? You will never want me to leave?"

Gregory kept rubbing circles on her shoulder with the palm of his hands, holding the distraught Sekirei close. He understood now that he had not really appreciated how attached a Sekirei was to their Ashikabi, in spite of Madoka's descriptions of the bond as "lifetime" and "forever". She was easily as distraught, even more so, than he had been when he had realized his wife had left.

It was just _starting_ to dawn on him just exactly how large a bomb had gone off in the middle of his nice, safe, comfortable life, when he had offered a warm donut to a cold, shivering, girl two weeks ago.

Gregory squeezed her against his chest and, in spite of all sanity, replied, "I promise. Forever and ever, Mado-chan."

She started bawling at that, but Gregory suspected these were more tears of relief, even happiness.

He went to fetch tea for both of them, seeing as both were emotionally exhausted now.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

That evening, Gregory sat on the couch, writing in the Notebook. Madoka was lying on the couch, still asleep, under a blanket, as she had been for the last few hours. She was exhausted from the emotional and, Gregory was shocked to found out, physical trauma of the day.

He wrote, " _…reported that not only did she suffer from sharing her Ashikabi's emotional reaction through the bond but when she thought she had been ordered away from her Ashikabi, a physical reaction occurred on top of the already significant emotional one.  
We are tentatively assigning this phenomenon Crest Rejection Shock. Madoka had actually heard of something vague when she was a child, something about the price a Sekirei pays if their Ashikabi rejects them. And this certainly seems to fit the symptoms the vague story from her childhood described.  
She was able to tell me she did not think it was normal for a Sekirei to be hit with Crest Rejection Shock over something like this, so quickly. It should require a far more clear, intentional, unmistakable, rejection of the bonded Sekirei to cause Crest Rejection Shock to start. But, we believe today's situation was aggravated by what she was experiencing through the bond, i.e., her Ashikabi's emotions and feelings of being rejected by his wife.  
Until we can interview other Sekirei who have experienced Crest Rejection Shock, we will not know, unfortunately.  
She didn't make it five meters from the apartment before the pain, which started high on her back at her Sekirei Crest and went through the center of her torso, put her on her knees. She then crawled back to lean against the apartment wall. This would seem to suggest that 'forever and ever' is not just a fond wish, for the Sekirei, but is, instead, a physiologically enforced mandate. Is this a remnant of their original species? Something designed for their human bodies by their original species, for this colonization effort? Something done to them by MBI?  
I don't have any way to know right now, but finding out is critical. This is nothing less than __biological slavery_ _; if there is any way at all to reverse and eradicate the threat of this Crest Rejection Shock simple human decency insists it be found."_

Gregory stopped writing and leaned back, resting his head against the wall behind the couch. The living room was dimly lit, only the lamp next to the couch providing any illumination to the open central area of the apartment. Gregory's eyes lingered on the bottle of scotch he could just see, sitting alongside a few other bottles of liquor on the sideboard in the dining area.

" _No. That's not going to help."_

His gaze dropped from the far side of the dining room to the very near person sharing the couch with him. She was sound asleep, thankfully, and looked comfortable, so he hadn't tried to get her to go on and sleep in Mishi's room.

Gregory's thoughts kept running in circles. He tried to reason with himself, _"What am I going to do? Sure, maybe Karen and Mishi being in the States will make them safer than remaining here. Maybe a little time and space will allow Karen to cool off; maybe we can patch things up later. She didn't mention divorce, I doubt she would ever suggest it. But living separated from now on might as well be the same thing."_

Gregory rubbed his forehead with a hand, trying to work out the tension. _"Still, I can't do anything about that right now. Maybe it's a mixed blessing, Karen going back home. This Sekirei Plan thing is going to get dangerous, I know it. But what about when it's over? What's my 'best case' scenario? How can I ever patch things up with Karen if Madoka is…"_

Gregory grimaced, watching Madoka sleep, unable to figure out any long-term picture that seemed reasonable or likely.

" _Okay, then we put the long term on hold, indefinitely. I cannot waste my time spinning my wheels worrying about what's going to happen a year from now. So, short term plans only, for now."_

Gregory nodded to himself and returned his focus to the Notebook. Fixing the Crest Rejection Shock thing was long term too, he knew, but it was absolutely one of the first things he would have at the top of every to-do list he was a part of from now on.

He also needed to work on cleaning up his growing hypothesis concerning the way the Sekirei might adapt themselves to their Ashikabi. Did the Sekirei just pick the most compatible Ashikabi by good luck or psychic intuition? Or did they pick an Ashikabi and then change over time to suit that Ashikabi's nature? Alternatively, perhaps just as bad, were the Sekirei condemned to a literal, physiologically enforced, slavery to a mate they were incompatible with if they happened to pick badly or if they were forced by circumstance to bond with someone who was less than ideal?

Whatever the case, he needed to find ways to define and test the nature of the bond between the Sekirei and the Ashikabi. How did it affect the Sekirei, how did it affect the Ashikabi, if there was any safe way to sever the bond, a safe way to transfer it, maybe even if there was some way to make sure both the Sekirei and the Ashikabi were equally treated by the bond, if nothing else.

Gregory resumed making notes in the Notebook, grimly ignoring the bottle of scotch.

o.0.O.0.o

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Sunday, December 29th, 2019

By Sunday afternoon the rain had finally relented, leaving the city washed clean, gleaming in the bright winter sunlight and under a brilliant blue sky, a comfortable 50f. Gregory felt the need to get out of the apartment and find a place where the two of them could clear their heads after the drama of the last 24 hours.

"Mado-chan, we've got that MBI card which can be used for damn near anything. I think it's time you saw some of the nicer things that Shin Tokyo has to offer in the way of hotels and dining. Go put on whatever you have that's nice and I'll do the same and we're going to go check into the," Gregory paused and looked at his tablet, "the Four Seasons. Five minutes away from the Imperial Palace, ten minutes from Ginza. We've got two king-size rooms next door to each other reserved for the next two nights."

Gregory knew it was a good idea when he saw Madoka immediately cheer up. She jumped up from the couch and ran off to Mishi's bedroom, "Okay, Gregory-kun!"

o.0.O.0.o

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Gregory and Madoka watched the sun set over Shin Tokyo, the clear sky a startling shade of cobalt blue over their heads, from their vantage on the fifth floor balcony outside Gregory's room. The patio furniture for the "Four Seasons at Marunouchi" rooms was more comfortable than the O'Donnell's dining room furniture, a fact Gregory pointed out to Madoka with some amusement.

Madoka looked out at downtown Shin Tokyo, the lights from the towering skyscrapers unable to compete with the glorious sunset, but she could see that soon the night would be illuminated by the holographics and LED's from nearby Ginza as well as the projections which were so popular among the giant towers of the downtown district. It was an almost breathtaking view, even from only the fifth floor. As the Four Seasons at Marunouchi was what could be called an "intimately sized" 5 star hotel and only occupied the first six floors of the fifty that made up the skyscraper, Madoka felt as though she were among, instead of above, the amazing architecture which made up this border between downtown and the Ginza commercial district.

"Okay, Mado-chan," Gregory's baritone caught her attention back to what they were doing, "the next school semester starts in a week, which means I have to allocate time over the next week to prepare for that. I know my job distracts from our ability to completely commit our attention to MBI and the Sekirei Plan, but outside of just quitting my job with no notice there isn't much I can do about that. So I'm committed to teaching at Tokyo Metro High School through this semester, which concludes on… let's see… Friday, March 27th." Gregory consulted the calendar on his large tablet, and then reached for his bottle of Diet Coke.

"That will occupy a great deal of your time, and be dangerous, right?" Madoka was sitting a quarter around the patio table from Gregory. Her thick blonde hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, a style she had not worn since leaving the MBI Sekirei Labs. From the glances Gregory kept shooting her way, she thought he found it attractive. She was comfortably relaxing in a long wool sweater, which fell to her upper thighs, and blue jeans, and her phone was sitting on the table in front of her in case she needed to make notes or look something up.

Gregory shrugged, "I don't know about dangerous, but it's necessary. I'm not walking away from my teaching position at Tokyo Metro unless I'm given no other options. From our best guesses, it is going to be four months until all of the Sekirei are active and in the city anyway."

Gregory flipped through his notes. "Here, what you said you overheard from MBI's lab techs. The Second Phase of the Sekirei Plan, where MBI is going to, somehow, take control of the entire city and control all traffic in and out, won't start until 90% of the Sekirei are winged. That cannot happen until at least 90% of the Sekirei are released by MBI. If they keep to the schedule of releasing three to five Sekirei a week the earliest we're looking at is April. And by April it will be a new academic year; maybe I can arrange a leave of absence or something, if it's necessary."

Gregory set down his pen and picked up his drink, leaning back in the patio chair, watching her. "I think 'life as usual' can go on through the end of the First Phase, at least."

"Okay, Gregory-san," Madoka agreed, not truly understanding why Gregory would want to risk going back and forth to school every day, but she also didn't want to disagree with him about it.

Gregory gave a small sigh in response. "Mado-chan… you're still feeling bad about yesterday, aren't you."

She could only shrug, then look down and away. She could not help it, even though Gregory said it was his fault, that he was sorry for how he had spoken to her, and that he did not want her to go away, she just could not help but feel like she was standing on a precipice, with just a small breeze needed to push her over. Whatever confidence she had in the relationship between them had been completely shattered yesterday, thanks to the tama pain that had punished her for not doing what her Ashikabi wanted, not being who her Ashikabi needed, not behaving as her Ashikabi expected.

"I guess," Gregory mused out loud, "that I could tell you again that it truly was not your fault and that I am profoundly sorry for my behavior, and that wouldn't do any more good today than it did yesterday."

" _Oh no, he thinks I just do not believe him! I am making it worse!"_

Madoka looked up at Gregory, her eyes wide, protesting, "No, no, Gregory-kun! I believe you, I am sorry if I made you think I did not believe you!"

He smiled ruefully back at her, reaching out to take one of her hands in his. "It's okay, Mado-chan, it's okay." Gregory looked around the patio, then away from the balcony towards the other tall buildings nearby. He said, "Let's go inside for a minute, I've got an idea that might help." Gregory released her hand and stood from the patio table, gesturing for her to precede him through the door.

Once inside Gregory pulled the glass door shut, the evening twilight combined with the few lights in the luxurious room made the area dim. Madoka could only just make out Gregory's slender, tall, figure in silhouette as he turned back from the glass door to face her.

"Mado-chan," he began, his deep voice sounding uncharacteristically nervous, "I think yesterday, with the way your, ah, tama core, was causing pain when you thought your Ashikabi was rejecting you, I suspect that even after I explained that I didn't really want you to go away that the damage was already done, so to say. The damage to our bond, our connection."

Madoka's eyes widened, "What do you mean? I can still feel it; it is still there, our bond! It is not damaged, Gregory-kun!"

Gregory took both her hands and met her eyes, "Calm, calm, Mado-chan. Of course it is still there, nothing can ever break it, right? What I mean is that the bond… it felt threatened, so now you probably feel like if you do even one wrong thing you'll fall off a cliff or something. Am I right?"

Madoka just stared up at Gregory then nodded. "That is… that is exactly right. How did you know?"

She could just make out his crooked smile in the twilight. He answered, "Eh, I've got some experience with being insecure about things, so it wasn't hard to guess at how you were feeling. So, the problem right now is that our bond is insecure. I've got an idea that might help it a little. Or maybe a lot."

"What is it? I want to go back to the way things were before… yesterday." Madoka squeezed both of Gregory's hands, hard. If there was any way to just make the last 24 hours not have happened she would take it!

"Well, eh," Gregory took a deep breath then continued, "I suspect that if we, eh, kiss, it will reinforce the bond. The bond has only had the one time, two weeks ago, and from what you told me about Sekirei and their larger abilities, what was it called…"

"Norito."

"Yes, Norito, then kissing after the initial winging has a measurable effect on the state of the Sekirei and on their abilities. So, it's highly likely a kiss establishes a metapsychic connection between the Ashikabi and the Sekirei, each time. And, well, if we establish that connection again, that might help with getting past what happened, yesterday."

Madoka felt her cheeks reddening in spite of herself. It was one thing to kiss Gregory when she was about to be captured by Higa's agents, but it was something else to just do it here in a hotel room. She also thought about the experience she'd had through the bond the other night, when Gregory was in the shower and again in the grocery store.

If their bond wasn't secure and strong "that" might not happen again. And she had decided she really wanted that to happen again, scary or not.

Gregory was waiting for her answer. What she could see of his expression in the dim light indicated he was starting to lose his nerve, which, oddly enough, reassured her.

"Yes, Gregory-kun. I think that is a good idea." Madoka nodded her head once, decisively, and kept her voice light. "So, how do we do this?"

She could make out the relief in Gregory's posture; he really had been nervous about suggesting this. Considering the fact that she would probably have done anything he ordered her to do, because of how insecure she felt in their bond right now, she was comforted that he was making such an effort to ask her opinion and get her permission before even kissing her.

" _He really is a good guy,"_ Madoka thought to herself.

Standing near each other, the difference in their heights was extremely obvious, even humorous. Gregory was about 1.9 meters tall and she was barely 1.5 meters tall. Which meant the top of her head barely reached Gregory's shoulders if they were standing next to each other. It was almost beyond humorous and into the realm of ridiculous actually.

"Hmmm. I assume you mean the mechanics of dealing with our differing heights. Good question, Mado-chan. It really is probably a good thing we're thinking about this now instead of in the middle of an emergency when you might need your Norito, right?" Gregory's chuckle sounded a bit forced, but he was right. It sure would be a silly way to be terminated, unable to get her Norito from her Ashikabi because the two of them did not know how to kiss.

"I could stand on a chair," Madoka suggested, optimistically. No, kissing someone while standing on a chair would not be awkward at all!

"If you were standing on a chair, I'm afraid you'd be taller than me. Enough taller than me that it would be… incredibly distracting." Gregory gestured vaguely at Madoka's chest while trying not to look at her chest.

It took her a moment, trying to figure out what the problem was and what her chest would have to do with… oh. Yes. Well, yes, if she were standing on a chair her breasts would be right in Gregory's face. Yes, he might find that distracting.

She laughed, once she realized what he was hinting at. "This is silly, Gregory-kun. I do not think it is supposed to be so difficult, just kissing someone!"

Gregory joined in the laughter, and then said, "You're right, you're right. Normally if I was intending to kiss a woman I'd just, well, just kiss her, but… I admit I'm a bit nervous." His thoughts wandered around the subject, _"Karen is not as short so it wasn't as awkward… damnit Greg, focus, man, focus."_

"It is okay, Gregory-kun. You have done more kissing in your life than I have, so you lead and I will follow and do not worry about, you know, stuff. It is okay, it really is." Madoka looked up at her Ashikabi, giving him _10,000 Watts of Resistance Is Futile_ ® smile.

That seemed to convince him. It always did.

Gregory nodded, took a breath, then stepped close and cupped her face in his right hand, gently stroking the side of his thumb along her cheek. Then he leaned down and kissed her.

She had expected a chaste kiss, maybe at most something sweet and lingering. And, to Gregory's credit, it _did_ start out that way. But after just a moment her lips parted of their own volition, and a small moan escaped her throat. She really had not meant for either to happen, but the way he looked at her before closing the distance between their lips…

She knew that look; she knew what _that girl_ looked like through adoring eyes. She could not _help_ but part her lips, could not _help_ but moan in response.

Her Ashikabi acted as though those two small things flipped some sort of switch in him, washing away whatever reluctance remained.

The hand on her cheek moved to the back of her neck, cradling her head, as Gregory's lips pressed more firmly against hers, their mouths open and his tongue exploring her lips and the tip of her own tongue. He was not suffocating her, but with the way his other arm wrapped around her body and pulled her up against his chest and how he held the back of her head so firmly, she suddenly found herself short of breath. Her heart was hammering and there was a roaring sound in her ears while the rest of her body just _melted_ against Gregory's tall frame. This did not seem awkward or difficult at all! Her eyes, which had closed as soon as their lips touched, opened wide as sunshine-yellow light filled the living room and a jolt of electricity went through her body.

"Ahh!" A gasp that Madoka could not help broke their kiss, as the bright, billowing, wings erupted from high on her back. The light reflected back at her through Gregory's intense green stare, the two of them just looking at each other in silence for a moment. His arms holding her tightly to him and, without her even realizing she'd done it her own hands had locked together behind Gregory's neck to pull him deeper into the kiss.

Madoka wished she could see what Gregory's eyes were seeing at that moment. Looking into the face of _that girl_ , with the ephemeral light of her wings just now slowly fading, the two of them having just broken a surprisingly passionate kiss. She realized how vain that might seem, but the way Gregory saw her was… difficult to resist.

There was nothing in the world that was as beautiful as what she looked like through Gregory O'Donnell's eyes.

"Well," Gregory began, then looked away and cleared his throat. She thought he might actually be blushing! She could also clearly feel his arousal, hard and pressing against her belly through their clothes. Just from kissing her?

Gregory relaxed the hold he had on her, making sure she was steady on her feet before stepping back. "Well, um. That was… very nice. Thank you, Mado-chan."

Madoka had one hand pressed against her chest where her heart was still thumping hard, and reached out with the other to take Gregory's hand. She smiled up at him, "Thank you, Gregory-kun." She paused a moment and thought about how she felt, and then said, "You were right. I do feel much better now. Thank you!"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory returned to the room's patio with another Diet Coke for himself and one for Madoka. He set hers on the table in front of her and walked on around to his own chair, settling himself and reaching for his cigarettes. After lighting one, he glanced up at Madoka, who was tapping out notes on her phone, and said, "Sorry, they didn't have any Pokka tea in the bar. So, your Norito. When a Sekirei kisses their Ashikabi, they get the wing manifestation again just like their initial winging, and their abilities get a short term across the board boost, plus there is supposed to be a, like, chant or prayer or such which fires off a high powered special attack?"

Madoka nodded, a bit morosely, and answered, "Yes, that is what is _supposed_ to happen."

"And you felt like you have more power now but you don't know what the chant part of your Norito is so you can't use it?" Gregory asked while making more notes in the Notebook. "No one told you what your Norito was, so how do any of you know what to say, how to trigger it?"

With a grimace and a shrug, Madoka set down her phone and looked out at the city from the patio. She said, "I do not know, and it is funny now that we are talking about it, that it never came up in the Labs. No one ever talked about how they would learn what their Norito was. Of course, none of them had the ability to use a Norito in the labs because none of us had Ashikabi yet. And that leads me to another question. I do not even know why MBI or any of us Sekirei know about the Norito. How did MBI even find out to tell us what little they did tell us? Since not one of the Sekirei that I ever heard of had an Ashikabi before they started releasing us at the first of December, at the start of Phase 1, how would any Sekirei or MBI know about things that only happen once a Sekirei has an Ashikabi, like the Norito?"

Gregory answered, "I'd bet a month's salary, at any odds you care to name, that at least one Sekirei was bound to an Ashikabi well before the First Phase began. With MBI's people recording every part of it and studying every effect afterwards." He ignored the shocked look on Madoka's face at the suggestion, and continued, "As far as where they'd get the information? From the records on the ship. Or from 01. But unless there was a record somewhere of what every Sekirei's Norito was going to be, some day in the future, they wouldn't know that specific information. Maybe it just comes to you when you're ready to use it? Inspiration of the moment?"

"Maybe. Still, Gregory-kun, it bothers me that even after we kissed and my wings flared and I can feel the effects of the Norito boost, that I have no idea what my chant is. What if I do not know what it is when I need it?"

"Well, we'll have to see if there are ways we can figure it out. Since your metafaculties are all healing oriented maybe you need a target to heal with your Norito. I tell you what, Mado-chan, I'll think about it and see if we can come up with some way to figure it out, okay? Oh, and we _still_ need to put aside time to test your Farsense metafaculty. How far it works, what it works on, how error free it is, can you evaluate other Sekirei and Ashikabi, how far can you sense them, all that sort of detail."

"Okay, Gregory-kun. Thank you." She smiled across the table at him while she reached for her own drink.

Gregory flipped to another page in the Notebook. "So, let's look at possible strategies, Mado-chan."

His blonde Sekirei, now noticeably more chipper than she had been before the kiss, nodded and set her drink down. She replied, "Okay, Gregory-kun. What is strategy, exactly? It's like a plan, right?"

Gregory shook his head, "Kind of. Strategy is a high-level plan to achieve your goals. It's the big picture, the grand scheme. Many use the word 'tactics' in the same way they use 'strategy' but that is not correct. Tactics are the way you achieve a specific task. Strategy is the entire plan which defines your goals and the broad picture of how you will accomplish them."

He could not tell if she got it or not, so Gregory continued, "Let's see if I can give an example that makes it clear. We are committed to participate in the Sekirei Plan in some way, simply because you are a Sekirei, I am your Ashikabi, and MBI is forcing us to be involved in the Sekirei Plan. Now, our goal might be something like 'survive the Sekirei Plan so we can live our lives afterwards in peace' or it might be 'win the Sekirei Plan and take the reward for ourselves'. If we decided our goal was to win the contest, then we would need to come up with a strategy to deal with the other Sekirei and Ashikabi. That strategy might be to defeat them all in combat one on one," Gregory held up his hand to forestall her protests, "I know that's not likely, I'm just using it as an example. Perhaps our strategy would be to get others to ally themselves with us long enough to defeat all the others. Whatever our overall idea was to 'win the Sekirei Plan' that would be our strategy. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Higa's strategy is to capture and force wing as many Sekirei to him as he can, building up an irresistible force, and either win the Plan per MBI's rules or bypass them entirely and go after MBI directly. Just as an example of what 'strategy' might be in one specific case, okay?"

Gregory took a drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke in a long sigh. He continued, "If we encountered a specific challenge, like, say, running into 86 Katsuragi out in the city, we would want to have prepared tactics for how to deal with that challenge. If we had good tactics, a good plan for that specific challenge, then we might do better in that situation than if we were just making up our plan of action as we went along."

"Does that make sense?" He reached for his drink and picked it up.

Madoka nodded, "I think I understand, yes. If our goal was to just survive, our strategy for that might be to escape the city and be far away until the Sekirei Plan was done with. We would need to come up with tactics for overcoming the obstacles that would try to interfere with our strategy, like MBI's security forces and the difficulty of traveling overseas with me not having a visa."

"Right! Just so, Mado-chan." Gregory took a drink and then set the bottle down, picked up his pen, and started making notes in the Notebook. "So, the first thing we need to do is figure out our goal. Then come up with some strategies that will accomplish that goal."

"I do not think there is any way we can win the prize, Gregory-kun." Madoka looked down at her hands in her lap, and then continued, "I am likely the weakest of all the Sekirei. I truly cannot defeat any of the others in combat, especially with the way we are supposed to fight. The rules say we are to fight one on one, we each declare our name and number to our opponent, and then we can fight. The fight continues until one or the other is terminated, by being physically injured so badly she cannot go on, or if one combatant gets such an upper hand that she can place her finger on her opponent's Sekirei Crest and recite her Norito. In either case, the Sekirei is defeated and her Crest disappears. The victor is supposed to stand guard over the fallen until MBI shows up to recover the terminated Sekirei."

Gregory was taking notes, then after a moment remarked, "That sounds like something someone who watched too many cartoons would come up with. Someone who read too much manga. Such ritualized, formal, combat is almost unheard of in the real world. Even the stories of samurai encountering each other on the road and dueling over using a bridge, or European knights in metal armor jousting against each other for the favor of some maiden, these things are the invention of storytellers. Made up stories that were told by professional entertainers to the wealthy, and, usually, the audience they made up the stories for was the wives and other female kin of wealthy and powerful men. So the stories were made up by men who never fought in battles and were tailored to appeal to romantic and naïve views of combat and war held by the women of their patrons, who also never fought or witnessed battle. Which is why so many of the old stories focus on one brave man, the chosen of the gods or blessed by fate, struggling against evil wicked men who do things like kidnap beautiful young maidens and whatnot."

Gregory paused in his note taking and looked up at Madoka, grimacing, "Whoever came up with this Sekirei Plan is an idiot. Someone who wants to see 'battles' but has no actual experience with what battle is. They want to have this controlled little war in the city, with a bunch of rules to make it entertaining for them, and they have nothing but a romantic and naïve view of what war is. I'm only a schoolteacher, but I've at least bothered to educate myself about the uglier, difficult things in this life. Hiroto Minaka seems to be a complete lunatic _and_ a moron."

Madoka frowned and said, "But it is MBI who is doing all of this, so that we Sekirei can ultimately find our Ashikabi and ascend!"

Gregory smiled and shook his head. Maybe it was time to at least _start_ working on tearing down this part of Madoka's conditioning. "Mado, you said yourself you don't know what 'ascend' means, and MBI has never told you. You don't need the Sekirei Plan in order to find your Ashikabi. If MBI had released you all from the imprisonment they kept you in your whole life, you'd have the chance then to explore the city and meet your Ashikabi. Without having Katsuragi chasing you down to take you back to Higa, I'd like to point out."

He paused a moment, tapping his pen on the Notebook. Then he continued, "MBI has set up this dangerous and destructive 'game' for their own reasons, Mado. Likely those reasons are, at least in part, the entertainment of a madman, Hiroto Minaka. Whatever other reasons there are we can't know, but I can guarantee one thing, Mado-chan."

"What is that, Gregory-kun?"

He looked at his pretty Sekirei and answered in as serious a tone as he could, "The one thing we _can_ be sure of is that the Sekirei Plan is not for the benefit of the Sekirei. Whatever MBI claims about the Sekirei Plan is irrelevant; the truth is this whole 'game' is a disaster for the Sekirei. The goal is to kill every other Sekirei that is alive on this world until there is only one left. Think about that for a minute, Mado-chan. Really stop and think about that and ask yourself how that can help the Sekirei? How can genocide help the victims of the genocide?"

"Well, maybe it will not help all the Sekirei but the one who wins will have won and will be safe from any other Sekirei ever trying to kill them, because they would be the only one left." Madoka looked almost angry about the idea that the Sekirei Plan was not good, just, and necessary, Gregory noticed.

"That's true, I suppose. But if there was no Sekirei Plan, why would another Sekirei be trying to kill you?" Gregory waited while Madoka turned that over in her head.

After a moment she answered, "Maybe because they wanted what I had or they just did not like me. Does there have to be a reason? If there is only me and one other Sekirei then one of us would fight the other so they would be safe from the other."

Gregory took another sip of his drink, thinking. _"Either the Sekirei are naturally prone to considering each other enemies or MBI has done a very good job with its conditioning program."_

Gregory set his drink down and carefully considered his words. "Mado-chan, I've got a hypothetical situation for you. Give me your best answer, it's not right or wrong, just whatever your best answer is for it, okay? So, if there was just you and one other Sekirei on an island and the other Sekirei didn't know you were there, they were asleep, and you were right next to them with, say, a knife in your hand. And they were sound asleep, completely unable to defend themselves. Would you stab them?"

Gregory watched Madoka's expression carefully as she thought about the question. After a moment he realized she was likely trying to come up with an answer he would like instead of answering from her heart. This was, he supposed, its own sort of answer. It sure did seem that either the Sekirei were, by nature, extremely aggressive and territorial or MBI had damaged them profoundly, because the answer to that question would be simple and easy for almost any human. Absent any reason, and it would need to be a _good_ reason with good proof, to think the other person was hostile, most people would not even think about stabbing them in their sleep.

That the moral and ethical answer was not so immediately obvious to Madoka was extremely disturbing.

Gregory was now _much_ happier about the fact that Karen was going to be an ocean and a continent away from Shin Tokyo soon.

Gregory continued writing in his Notebook, until Madoka spoke up.

"I do not know. It would depend on who they were, Gregory-kun. If it was my friend Yosuga, of course I would not. But if it was someone like Katsuragi I would."

Gregory nodded, as though he was agreeing. He did not bother pointing out that in the hypothetical situation he'd set up she was, deliberately, without information about who this other Sekirei was and without information about what their motives or behavior might be. What was important was that her answer was an effort to answer with something she felt Gregory would approve of.

"You've mentioned your friend, Yosuga, before. And others in the MBI Sekirei Labs you grew up with who you were close to, such as 16 Toyotama. Could you and Yosuga get along and cooperate if you had been released at the same time and in the same place?"

Madoka nodded her head, "Yes, of course. It is what we planned on, why I want to find some way to get my phone number or your phone number to her so she can reach us as soon as she is released. When we were younger we agreed that we would help each other, even share the same Ashikabi if we could."

Gregory frowned at that. "I thought you said an Ashikabi having more than one Sekirei was wrong, when you were telling me about what happened with Katsuragi."

"No, Gregory-kun," Madoka corrected, "it was Higa's forcing Katsuragi which was so wrong! If she and Toyotama-onee-sama wished to share their Ashikabi and he wanted it too there would not be anything wrong with that."

Gregory made a few notes and decided to set that subject aside for a bit. "Back to the situation on the island, with no one else around and you had a knife. What if the person asleep in front of you were not a Sekirei, but instead was just a human? No one you know, just some random person?"

This time her answer was immediate. "I would not stab them. There would be no reason to stab a human who was just sleeping."

Gregory continued writing as he nodded to Madoka. She was conditioned to see all other Sekirei as enemies, with only a few exceptions, and those were the result of exposure during the time she was growing up. Humans did not register as automatic enemies, as automatic threats, like Sekirei did. Were the Sekirei so competitive against each other that they couldn't cooperate? No, that couldn't be right, Madoka got along with other girls growing up and even said she could imagine sharing an Ashikabi with another Sekirei.

Gregory wondered what sort of world the Sekirei homeworld was, wondered if the behavior Madoka was demonstrating was native to them instead of a result of MBI's machinations of the Sekirei. It would be a miracle that they had been able to establish any sort of civilization, much less advance to starship interstellar exploration if they were as aggressive, territorial, and suspicious of each other as the Sekirei seemed to be. He made a note on his "Long Term" page about that subject then turned his attention back to Madoka.

"Either way, for now it isn't terribly important. So, the Sekirei Plan and our strategy. We could try to escape the city and MBI's Sekirei Plan, but that is likely impossible. They already know who we are, where we are, what our resources are, and by now they have a list of everyone I have ever met. Running and hiding is almost completely out of the question, so staying and surviving is likely our only real hope for getting through this."

Madoka slumped, discouraged. "You really do not think there is any chance at all we could get away? I had thought that maybe since you know so much about how the world works you might be able to come up with some kind of plan."

"No, I'm afraid not, Mado-chan. And while I appreciate your faith in my experience with the world I'm not really super-secret-agent man, who can elude the security apparatus of a trillion yen multinational corporation like MBI. And who knows what sort of legal and illegal resources they have dedicated specifically to keeping their Sekirei and Ashikabi in Shin Tokyo and participating in the Sekirei Plan." Gregory smiled and tapped her foot with his own. "Hey, it's not that bad. We'll figure out something. It's just that escaping to South America and hiding out in the Amazon isn't going to be the plan."

"Then what can we do, Gregory-kun?"

"Let's keep our heads down, avoid conflicts with other Sekirei and Ashikabi as much as we can for now. We'll reach out, as much as possible, to the Ashikabi and Sekirei who inhabit our part of the city, to see if we can make alliances with them. I already set up a Twitter channel and a Global Homie group for Sekirei and Ashikabi as well as a few other social media groups that are all fed from one main Google+ Group. Nothing specific is given away in the group information so MBI shouldn't complain about violating secrecy but _hopefully_ new Ashikabi searching for information on the internet will find these social network groups and from there maybe we can communicate with them, even arrange to trade information or ally ourselves with them." Gregory waited to hear what his not-terribly-sociable Sekirei thought about that.

"Why would they help us? Would not any Sekirei we meet be more likely to just attack?" Madoka looked genuinely confused by his suggestion, which did not surprise Gregory at this point.

"Well, because some of them might be like you and I. People who would prefer to be able to just live in peace instead of worrying about when someone is going to jump down onto our heads and kill us. And I'm hoping that if we can get ahold of brand new Ashikabi and talk to them, give them a perspective other than the mantra their pretty new girlfriends are chanting in their ears, "Fight, Fight, Fight", maybe even more can be diverted from actively participating in MBI's insanity. Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to worry about the other Sekirei?"

Madoka thought about that, looking out at the now nighttime view of Ginza and downtown. The bright projections and holographics from the commercial district made colorful illuminations across her face, which Gregory could not help but smile at as he looked at her.

"I suppose it would be nice. Do you think we could really deviate from the Sekirei Plan like that and not draw even more trouble down on ourselves, Gregory-kun?" Madoka turned to face him, her head tilted the way she did when she was curious about something.

Gregory replied, "Hopefully so. We don't know exactly what MBI has in place to make sure everyone participates in the Sekirei Plan and follows the rules. We don't know how effective their oversight is either. Do they see everything? And can they enforce anything they wish? Those are two separate issues MBI has to address: their intelligence and their effective ability to project force. If they don't know what's going on, then all the force in the world won't help them. If they can't force others to their will then all the awareness in the world won't help them either. We just don't know how effective either of those elements are. We can only hope that one, or both, of those aspects are limited."

Gregory lit another cigarette and took a deep drag of the smoke, then continued, "Because if MBI is both all-knowing and all-powerful, we're pretty much screwed."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Monday morning, after two _very_ comfortable nights at the Four Seasons, Gregory and Madoka made their way to the desk clerk to check out and pay their room service bill as well as the room bill. Gregory gestured to Madoka to go ahead and pay with the MBI card. He noticed a distinct frown crinkle her brow as she moved up to the clerk and asked for their bill.

Madoka was quiet in the Jeep as Gregory navigated the downtown traffic, making his way towards NR20, the big freeway that would take them all the way home to Shibuya Ward, in the west. Once he merged with the fast flowing traffic on the 10-lane elevated westbound NR20 Gregory turned down the music and asked Madoka, "Can you tell me what made you unhappy back there?"

He saw Madoka turn in her seat a bit to face him more directly, out of the corner of his eye. Her answer was about what he expected. "What do you mean, Gregory-kun?"

He grinned and glanced over at Madoka before returning his attention to the freeway traffic. "I mean, when I indicated for you to use the MBI card to pay the hotel bill and the room service bill. It irritated you and afterwards you were still irritated. Can you tell me what it was about it that got under your skin?"

Gregory had a good idea what it was, and if he was right, he wanted to nip it in the bud, firmly and decisively. This was going to be hard enough without counterproductive cultural crap making them operate at a handicap.

Madoka still had not answered, so Gregory added, "Mado-chan, I really do want to hear exactly what it was that irritated you. No matter if it was something I did, something you felt was wrong, something that you're worried how I will take. I promise I won't get angry about it, I just want to talk about whatever it was and see if we can fix it."

In his peripheral vision, he could see she turned her head and looked out the passenger side window. It reminded him of the night she became his Sekirei; her looking out the passenger window and talking about things she found difficult, he only able to see her face in the reflection of the glass.

After a few more minutes, in which Gregory said nothing, letting her gather her thoughts, Madoka mumbled, "I do not know. I thought you would pay, is not that the way things are supposed to be? The guy pays for the dinners and the stuff? Why make me pay?"

Gregory nodded and inwardly congratulated himself on guessing correctly. Fortunately, he already had some of this discussion planned, in case it came up. And, given the conservative nature of Japanese society and gender roles in that society he had been pretty sure it would, indeed, come up.

"I can understand that, Mado-chan. In normal circumstances and if I were in your shoes, I too would probably have found that irritating."

She turned to look at him, probably surprised at his agreement. "Then why…" she started, but let the question fall, incomplete. Feeling better about their bond or not, she was still reluctant to outright challenge him. A trait that was at the top of his list of "things to work on with Madoka".

"Primarily because it wasn't you paying, Mado-chan. It felt that way to you because you are holding the MBI Platinum Card and it was issued to you. But you aren't the one paying the bill, MBI is. Did they tell you why they are giving all the participants such unlimited cards?"

She took a moment before answering, "So the Sekirei and their Ashikabi could focus on participating in the Plan instead of working. But you are working anyway!"

Gregory smiled, still watching the traffic as he drove, "True, I am. But my salary is going to paying the rent on my family's apartment, paying the expenses of having this Jeep, the things I was already paying for. And even if I were just setting aside all of my salary in savings and we were using the MBI card to pay for everything we possibly could, why would that be a bad thing? It's not _our_ MBI card or _your_ MBI card. It's MBI's card, _they_ get the bill for everything we put on it and neither you or I have to pay them back for any of it."

He could tell this wasn't reaching her past the conservative conditioning she'd been raised with. He tried again. "The MBI card is a resource we have available to us. Us. You and me. Ashikabi and Sekirei. Not 'you', Madoka. But 'we', the two of us. Much like 'we' have this Jeep to get us around the city when we need to drive somewhere. These things are our resources, our assets. We would be foolish to not utilize every resource we have, to the very best of our ability, using it to further our goals, use it as part of our strategy, and include it when planning tactics for overcoming obstacles. Even obstacles as mundane as 'where shall we sleep' and 'what will we eat'. Take a moment and think very carefully about this question before you answer. Is your feeling of being taken advantage of by me because of the MBI card helping us in our goals or hurting us in our goals?"

Gregory waited again, patiently. Years ago, he had found it impossible to just sit and wait for an answer when a younger Karen and a younger he would get into discussions about difficult items. He had learned through fire and blood to give a woman the time she needed to formulate her answers.

Well, maybe not fire and blood. But it sure seemed like it, in retrospect.

"I… I never thought of it that way, Gregory-kun. I guess you're right, it is just… I suppose I did not think things through very clearly. The irritation was a reaction instead of something I thought of. I am sorry." She sounded honestly contrite, which Gregory did not truly want. Feeling bad or shamed would not help.

"No reason to be sorry, Mado-chan. No, really, there isn't. You nailed it right on the head, you reacted instead of behaving in a way that you had previously thought through and decided on. The source of your feeling is that you were told, probably not directly, but you were still told, by someone you believed, that a guy spending money on a girl is one of the ways he proves he cares for her. He insists on providing for her, it's the 'manly' thing to do."

Gregory grinned sardonically and shook his head, then continued, "That's all just bullshit, Mado. It's all just stupid, self-defeating, games that people made up for making drama, with rules for 'this is how guys behave' and 'this is how girls behave'. Girls shouldn't have sex because then they are 'easy', guys should always pay for dinner otherwise they are 'cheap'. More human misery has been caused by these idiotic unwritten rules…"

Gregory kept to himself that 90% of these drama producing, judgmental, behavior-shaming, "rules" were developed by and enforced by the _women_ in almost every culture since Babylon. He didn't think that bit of information would help the current conversation.

Gregory sighed, and then said, "Usually when people react on the spur of the moment they are going to behave according to the cultural traditions and mores they learned growing up. When they were learning what is right and what is wrong, learning what behavior was approved and what was not. As a Sekirei, you didn't get the same sort of _deliberate_ teaching of Japanese cultural behavior a typical Japanese child would get, but you still caught all the same idiotic cultural gender rules present in this country. All of the adults around you, as you were growing up, they were making the rules for what was acceptable behavior and what was not, and they deliberately or incidentally were communicating to you _their_ feelings about proper and improper behavior. You, and probably all the rest of the Sekirei, noticed those things. You had little choice but to notice them, since they were your only clues about how to behave."

"And you think the things we learned were wrong, Gregory-kun?"

He shrugged and replied, "Not in all situations, but a lot of the unwritten rules about gender roles and what is expected behavior for males and expected behavior for females, can be counterproductive, hurtful, and self-limiting. Especially in Japan and much of the rest of the East. The West certainly has its flaws in this regard as well, but women's roles in Japanese culture are particularly… conservative. Hell, just the Japanese fetishization about female virginity alone illustrates the second class status of women…"

Gregory glanced over at Madoka then returned his eyes to the traffic. "Consider this example. Just because someone, an authority figure of some sort, may have indicated to you that only the male scientists in the labs should be working a job and the females should all be properly home raising the children, that doesn't make it _right_. It just makes it that person's opinion. And if you never heard a different opinion, never heard a counterargument from an equally important authority figure, then that persons opinion about women in the workforce would become the rule in your head for how men and women should behave as regards working. You would, today, see a woman working and as a 'gut reaction' think of it as wrong, that she should be at home raising her children instead of working. It is not necessarily wrong, but it is not necessarily right either. Those rules that we write in our heads as we grow up, that we learn because someone in a position of authority told us 'this is right' or 'this is wrong' when we were children, those rules are very powerful. And that we rarely even remember the learning of these things makes them even more powerful, because we then come to think of them as "instinctive" reactions, right and wrong that is hardwired into us so it must be correct. They affect a great deal of our behavior, and often they affect our behavior in negative ways."

"Then how can I know what is right and wrong?" Madoka sounded frustrated. He could not really blame her for that. Someone telling you that you need to reevaluate all of your preconceived notions about behavior was a hard thing.

"Well, Mado-chan, for now, the best advice I can give you is to try to think things through and judge your behavior, and others, based on how practical the action in question is. Does it help us survive this insane Sekirei Plan? Or does it make things harder? In addition, if you want my personal opinion, I feel it is appropriate to evaluate actions based on how much harm or suffering will be caused by the actions in question. It is my belief that we all should act in ways that causes the least amount of harm to others, whenever it is practical. Or, you know, even when it might be impractical."

Gregory paused, frowning a bit, then concluded, "There's enough unhappiness in this world as it is. Adding to it is… well, adding to it _unnecessarily,_ is the only inarguable sin, in my opinion."

She thought about that for a few minutes. In fact, they were pulling off the NR20 freeway, at the Shibuya Ward exit, before she answered.

"So you would fight or hurt someone, but only when there is no other good options. You might steal from someone but only if it was the only way you could achieve your goals, not just because it was easier? And using the MBI card like we are is not hurting anyone?"

Gregory laughed, "Well, it might hurt Hiroto Minaka a little, but MBI is incredibly wealthy so it's a very small harm. And when it comes to MBI, they've already done great harm to you and to me and to all the other Ashikabi and Sekirei. They've got a lot of karma to pay back before I'd worry too much about how much harm we're doing to them."

"So, I should make sure to think things through before reacting, is what you are saying?"

Gregory nodded as they turned onto the main thoroughfare that led to the apartment. "Yes. Mado-chan, I want you to break free from the restrictions you were clad in by MBI and the people who raised you. Be your own free judge of right and wrong. Decide for yourself what behavior you find good and what you find bad. Don't restrict yourself and your view of the world based on the narrow-minded, conservative views of some crazy scientists at MBI. And don't just replace them with me, either; you are the one who decides what is right and what is wrong for you, not me, not Hiroto Minaka, not Sekirei 01. You."

He glanced over at her, a smile on his face. "Really, what I want? Most of all I just want you to be free, Mado-chan."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

New Year's Eve. Tuesday night found Gregory and Madoka walking together among the visitors to the small Shoun-ji Temple, the nearest Buddhist temple to the apartment. They both wore beautiful new silk yukata, which MBI had so generously paid for earlier in the day.

Madoka was now getting into the spirit of having MBI paying for her and Gregory's entertainments. It was a fun game and the prizes were awesome! Five star hotels, luxurious silk yukata, New Year's Eve at the beautiful Shoun-ji Temple. She was ever so glad Gregory had pointed out how silly her reactions had been concerning the MBI card. They _could_ be sitting at the apartment tonight instead, as Gregory pointed out to her.

She led the way, MBI card in hand, to the Shibuya shopping district's best yukata and kimono store.

Gregory just laughed and went along.

It was good to hear him laugh. Before they'd gone shopping he'd had phone calls from both Mishi and from his son, Mark, who was still in the States. Both phone calls had been very difficult for Gregory, and frustrating for Madoka.

Listening to him let both Mishi and Mark yell at him and say many mean things about how he had supposedly treated Karen was almost impossible for Madoka to tolerate. But he had asked her to not interfere, so she didn't.

As soon as she could distract him with plans for New Year's Eve, she did so.

Now the two of them walked, side by side, along the lovely pathways surrounding the Shoun-ji Temple. Their yukata were warm enough for the chilly weather, since there was little wind. Gregory frequently stopped and took photos, more than a few of them featured his beautiful, silk-garbed, Sekirei.

As midnight grew close, Madoka dragged Gregory to the temple itself, where shrine-maidens, in their traditional wide sleeved garb, drew fortunes for the visitors for a small donation. She and Gregory also took the time to write their private wishes for the upcoming year onto rice paper and tie the wishes to the tree branches of the shrine. Branches that were already bearing hundreds and hundreds of small, meticulously rolled, scrolls containing the New Year's wishes of those who came through earlier.

Madoka finished writing her wish to find and save her friend Yosuga from any evil Ashikabi, then tied it to a branch with the small silken cord provided by the shrine maidens. She waited for Gregory, who seemed lost in thought before he finally wrote his wish on his paper then tied it to the tree. They both stood as the traditional 108 bells rang in the New Year at midnight.

Gregory smiled and said, "Hmm. 108 bells. That's quite the coincidence, isn't it, Mado-chan?"

Madoka could only nod, amazed. "Why is it 108 bells? What does it mean?"

Gregory grinned at her as he answered, "They represent the 108 sins of Buddhist belief. Really, it's more specific than that, it's the 108 earthly temptations of the flesh which in Buddhist belief a person has to resist for their own good."

The grin changing to a leer on his face was unmistakable.

Madoka slapped Gregory on the arm and yelped, "Aw! That is not right! The Sekirei are not sins or temptations of the flesh! No laughing! That is not funny!"

Gregory just laughed in spite of her and put an arm around her to give a one-armed hug.

As the two walked back towards the commuter train stop which would take them the short distance back to the apartment, Madoka slipped her hand into Gregory's and the two of them continued, hand in hand.

"What did you wish, Gregory-kun?" She looked up at her tall Ashikabi, smiling happily. It had been a difficult day but it had ended almost perfectly. Just the two of them, hand in hand, walking in this beautiful garden in this beautiful city.

"Well now," Gregory replied, smiling slightly and keeping his eyes ahead, "if I tell you it won't come true, Mado-chan. It's a secret."

"No fair. Come on!"

Gregory laughed, and then looked down at her with a fond expression on his face. He squeezed her hand and said, "Okay, I'll tell you. Someday. I promise. But not now. For now it's a secret."

Madoka narrowed her eyes but accepted his answer, for now. She leaned her head against Gregory's arm as they walked and she could not remember ever being so content.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Tied to the shrine tree among the thousand other wishes, one was written in English. It was one line, written in a firm hand.

"May my beautiful little bird find happiness."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

 _ **The End of Book Two  
**_  
Book Three (chapters 8 and 9 of NGFOM) will be posted in one week (May 22nd, 2015). Though Book Three is only two chapters, they do combine for 25,000 words, so there is a reasonable amount of story in the Book Three arc to look forward to.

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 ** _The Sekirei Plan_**

From what Hiroto Minaka informed me during our brief videoconference after winging Madoka, and from what Madoka herself has been able to tell me based on what briefings she was part of, and what she was able to overhear during the last years in the MBI Sekirei Labs, this is what we know about the Sekirei Plan.

It was not revealed to the Sekirei (at least Group 11) until they were already at a teenage level of development.

Originally the First Five cooperated with Hiroto Minaka and company as part of the "S Plan" (as distinct from the "Sekirei Plan" but we don't know what the "S Plan" was). As Minaka's intentions either changed or were revealed, as the "S Plan" changed into the "Sekirei Plan", his goals became unacceptable to several of the First Five and all but 04 Karasuba abandoned Minaka and the remaining 103 Sekirei.

What part 01 had in this is unknown entirely. Only rumor and myth speak of this figure, at least for the Group 11 Sekirei.

The remaining 103 Sekirei were raised by MBI and conditioned to participate in Minaka's "Sekirei Plan". How much conditioning was necessary is unknown, as the nature of the Sekirei is unknown. We do know it would take a great deal of effort to condition 103 random human children for the same purpose.

The Sekirei are to be released into Shin Tokyo, Japan, and are under orders to not leave the city, ever. They are released 3 to 5 per week, starting at the beginning of December, 2019. This would mean all would be released by April, 2020.

They are to find their Ashikabi and bond to him.

They are then to seek out the other winged Sekirei and engage them in formalized combat, or duels. The rules for such duels are strongly impressed on the Sekirei. They are:

The Sekirei both announce number and name.

They fight each other until one is damaged so badly their Sekirei Crest disappears from their body or until one gains enough of an upper hand to place their fingers on the opponents Crest and recite the victors Norito. This causes the defeateds Sekirei Crest to disappear as well.

As a 'terminated' Sekirei is completely unable to function, the victor is to stand guard over the defeated until MBI arrives to recover the body.

All bodies of the Sekirei are intended to be recovered by MBI and returned to MBI's facilities.

Sekirei attacking humans or Ashikabi is not permitted. Allowances may be made for collateral, incidental, damage, but the Sekirei are expected to make all reasonable effort to avoid harming bystander humans and are expected to make more than merely reasonable efforts to avoid harming opposing Sekirei's Ashikabi.

Once 90% of the Sekirei are 'winged', MBI is (somehow) going to close the city by force, blocking all traffic in and out of the city for the Sekirei and the Ashikabi, searching every vehicle individually via hand held sensors. (Note: Madoka overheard this description of the "Second Phase" of the Sekirei Plan and the hand held sensors from two careless lab techs a few months before the First Phase began).

What enforcement mechanism MBI has in place to insure the rules of the 'game' are followed is unknown. Madoka says she regularly saw security personnel in military type clothing and bearing assault rifles, as well as what might have been Armored Personnel Carriers, with MBI logos. How many, how well armed, how well trained, is unknown.

Also unknown is what extent MBI's intelligence apparatus functions. It is assumed, by the Sekirei themselves and strongly confirmed by the rules as they were explained, that immediately on the termination of a Sekirei that MBI is aware of this fact. This reveals several disturbing facts about the reach of MBI's awareness. To what degree is MBI aware of the location of each Sekirei? Through what mechanism are they aware? The "Second Phase" plan to stop all vehicular traffic (see below) and search car by car with hand held sensors for any hidden Sekirei would indicate a distinct _limit_ on MBI's awareness of the location of all the Sekirei. However, the expectation that the _moment_ they are terminated in a duel that MBI forces would be dispatched to the _exact_ _location_ of the fallen Sekirei indicates a completely contradictory level of awareness.

We can assume there are additional "Phases" after this "Second Phase". Perhaps the Third Phase would be triggered once 100% of the Sekirei remaining are winged, for instance.

The fact that MBI intends to seize governmental control of Shin Tokyo and engage in martial law control of the capital of Japan is mind-boggling.

How they can expect to get away with such behavior without profound ramifications is utterly beyond me.

Secondly, why would they do this? The Sekirei have already been informed, in the First Phase, they are not allowed to leave the city. The Ashikabi they find for themselves during the First Phase are informed of this as well. Does MBI not have any way to insure the First Phase Sekirei and Ashikabi remain in the city? If not, how can they expect this rule to be followed? If they do have ways to insure this rule is followed in the First Phase, what is the point of seizing control of the city and engaging in illegal martial law, blocking all traffic in and out of the city with, one assumes, vehicular searches and such? Other than drawing the immediate attention of every government of every nation on the planet, for what possible reason would MBI perform such a heavy-handed act?

Surely MBI's Second Phase Plan isn't intended to isolate news and information originating in Shin Tokyo from the rest of the world, some sort of attempt to keep the Sekirei and the Sekirei Plan contained while the Sekirei duel to the death in the streets over the course of, what, weeks? Months? Surely not. With 19 million people in Shin Tokyo and every one of them has a camera phone? With internet access from dozens of services, not to mention satellite communications? No, that would be laughably naïve. You couldn't informationally isolate Kandahar, Afghanistan, these days with such methods, much less try to do so with Shin Tokyo, the technological and information services capital of the entire planet.

The rules of combat themselves are ridiculously formal. It is obvious whoever came up with this is guilty of romanticizing conflict and battle. The delusions of the administrators, assuming that, for example, one Ashikabi would not kill another Ashikabi in order to prevent the loss of their Sekirei in combat, reveals a worrisome level of naiveté on the part of whoever is controlling this multi-trillion yen international megacorp and directing its resources to enforce this "Sekirei Plan". If another Sekirei were about to terminate Madoka I would not hesitate even a second before putting a bullet into the head of the enemy Sekirei's Ashikabi, for example.

That MBI's briefings to the Sekirei and the Ashikabi themselves do not even _mention_ this sort of scenario smacks of incredible naiveté.

The goal of the Plan, that the winner, the sole remaining Sekirei and her/his Ashikabi, will win the "right to ascend" and the "higher sky above" is so vague a goal or prize that it is amazing MBI was able to condition the Sekirei to participate. The proposition that one must engage in the genocide of every other member of one's race in order to win an undefined "right to ascend" is just startlingly ridiculous. Yet Madoka shows every sign of believing in the Sekirei Plan and believing in "the Professor", as is likely for all the Sekirei. Years and years of conditioning… what great effort MBI must have gone through just for that one purpose?

Obviously, any "plan" which features as its core the genocide of a race of intelligent beings is as evil as anything one could imagine. Any decent, moral, person would stand against MBI's "Sekirei Plan", and only the most venal and corrupt, or brainwashed, person would participate willingly.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

Started Oct 14 2014  
Finished Oct 17 2014  
Final Edits May 16 2015  
Posted May 16 2015


	8. Bk3 - Ch1 Growing Danger

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 3.1 – Ch 8 Growing Dangers, New Revelations

 _Author's Note: This story is still rated M in case anyone reading it forgot. No one under 17 admitted without parent. Seriously._  
 _One reviewer mentioned that Nikon does not make a v10 camera, and this is true, at the time of this posting in 2015. Readers should remember the Sekirei story is set 15 years in the future from the date it began publication (the first Sekirei manga were in 2005), or, 2020 AD. The author has taken freedoms in assuming all sorts of minor technological advancements, even if the canon material shows teenagers in 2020 AD in Japan using Nokia flip phones, against all reason. Even Hiroto Minaka, the President of MBI, is shown in the anime using a circa 2002 Nokia flip phone! No, this story is set in the near future so there are minor tech advances._

 _Bonus Material: Pictures (NSFW) and a map of Book 3 locations posted to the author's tumblr page. Link to Book Three's bonus material can be found on the author's profile page._

:::NGFOM 3.1:::  
:::NGFOM 3.1:::

{ _Farsense or other Metafaculties_ }  
[ _Memories_ ]  
" _Internal dialogue_."

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Gregory O'Donnell stood in the entryway of his apartment, pulling his suit jacket on as he prepared to leave for school to teach his Saturday morning "English as a Second Language" class. He checked to make sure his hair was dry; he was running a little behind so had skipped the hair-drying portion of his morning shower. One of the advantages to wearing his hair in a short buzz cut was that it did not take long to dry.

Earlier — as he had headed into the bath to get his morning shower — his Sekirei, 37 Madoka, had wandered from her room and past him. She was all sleepy-eyed and with mussed hair and heading to the kitchen. Gregory was unable to ignore the fact she was topless, with her large breasts and light pink nipples parading right by him in the hallway. As far as he could tell the only thing she was wearing was her favorite pair of sleeping shorts, which were so short as to really need a different name than "shorts" or even "briefs". Maybe "tinies", "diminutives", or even "infinitesimals".

It had become somewhat common for him to see Madoka in skimpy "comfortable" clothes over the last few weeks since it was just the two of them in the apartment now but she had never forgotten to put on a shirt before! This encounter in the hallway resulted in the same delay in the shower that encountering his amazingly sexy Sekirei usually resulted in.

Gregory thought to himself, _"I swear to God, if I get carpal tunnel syndrome because of being an Ashikabi, I'm suing MBI."_

As he headed out the door for class he called out towards the back of the apartment where Madoka was, he assumed, lying in bed in Mishi's bedroom. Or, rather, Mishi's ex-bedroom. "Bye, Mado-chan! Remember, I won't be back till later, I've got to meet those landlords! Call me or text me if you need anything! Oh, and don't forget to hit the ATM!"

He could just make out her faint reply through her bedroom door, "See you, Gregory-kun!"

She sounded out of breath. Or maybe it was just the door in the way. He shrugged and shut the apartment door behind him.

:::NGFOM 3.1:::

"Jā matane, Gregory-kun!"

Sekirei number 37, Sanjunana Madoka, bonded Sekirei of Ashikabi Gregory O'Donnell, was indeed lying in bed but she was not napping as her Ashikabi had assumed. No, she was instead lying naked among the tangled sheets of Mishi's bed panting for breath and almost glowing with contentment. With her half-lidded eyes, slightly parted lips, and her creamy skin with just enough sweat to have a healthy radiance she looked almost ridiculously satisfied.

She stretched her arms over her head and arched her back extravagantly, incidentally presenting her glorious body for full display to any observers.

Boy did she ever _love_ Gregory's "shower time"! She would wait, listening through the wall separating her room and the bath, for the flash of his thoughts and feelings through their metapsychic bond. Flashover which included all of the physical sensations as well as the extremely detailed visualizations of his fantasies of her as he climaxed. And it was better than anything she'd _ever_ experienced either alone or with the lovers she'd had in the MBI Sekirei Labs before the Sekirei Plan began.

It was not even close. It was practically a different thing entirely. There should be different words for this because "sex" and "orgasm" were not nearly sufficient!

She remembered the first time it had happened, Christmas Eve three weeks ago. The intensity of the experience — both the visual fantasy and the actual orgasm — overwhelmed her at the time. It terrified the hell out of her, actually.

But now?

 _Now_ she made an effort to come up with new ways to "inspire" her Ashikabi every day, as many times a day as she could. Today was the first time she'd dared pretend to be sleepy enough to have forgotten her shirt. For a moment there she had wondered if Gregory was going to get a nosebleed, like in the animes.

She also made sure he had plenty opportunity for private time. If he went to his bedroom and shut the door she _never_ knocked to disturb him. _And_ she'd told him flat out that, in her opinion, _two_ nice long showers a day should be considered a minimum for a civilized person.

He had no idea that she… benefited from what he assumed was his private time and Madoka felt he did not need to know. It was not hurting anything!

Her own "private time" was singularly unsatisfying by comparison. On the few days that she did not manage to motivate Gregory to take matters into his own hands Madoka resorted to taking care of herself. It wasn't something she was terribly used to doing, though. In the MBI Sekirei Labs it was always difficult to get into the mood since you never knew when you were — literally — being watched. And no matter how horny the teenager the suspicion that you are being watched by perverted security and scientific staff while you were in the shower or in your bed is a mood killer.

Except for 54 Kuruse. There was something wrong with that girl. Madoka wondered how often Kuruse would end up in trouble with the Tokyo Police once she as released into the city. Public indecency would be the least of the charges the exhibitionist Sekirei would likely face on a regular basis.

But with the luxurious privacy that living in the _real_ world granted Madoka found that even though she was constantly horny since her winging masturbation was just not good enough. She could get herself off — given some time and some effort — but all too often the orgasms she managed were disappointing. Too much work, not enough payoff.

Maybe she was just doing it wrong. She would have to ask Gregory.

She grinned at the thought of that conversation. She wished she had the courage to do it.

But for now Gregory's orgasms would do. And though the physical experience of the incredibly intense climax was very satisfying, the thoughts and emotions she also received were more difficult to process. More than a few of the visuals she received from Gregory during his orgasm were startling, even shocking, for the young Sekirei. The graphic, blatantly lustful, in-your-face carnality of Gregory's thoughts at the moment of his orgasm were just _not_ the sort of things about which she had ever fantasized during her infrequent masturbation back in the Dorms. Or _ever_ thought about, at _any_ time. She recalled how she used to fantasize about her future Ashikabi; maybe she would think about how his voice might sound whispering sweet nothings into her ear or what it might be like to kiss him. Maybe she would think about his hands touching her. Since all of her sexual experiences before now were strictly girl-sex she'd had no real knowledge of male sexuality. So she'd had no information with which to build realistic sexual fantasies involving a male Ashikabi.

She no longer suffered from such a lack of knowledge. She'd bet she was more aware of male sexuality now than almost any woman who'd ever lived. Gregory's fantasies were a lot more... specific than her vague adolescent romantic fantasies, that was for sure. There were no tender looks and romantic words. No, it was more like _cumming down her throat_ or _furiously jackhammering her pussy until she screamed her release_.

She knew those were even the words in his fantasies and those words made her blush just thinking about them in the privacy of her own head. There was never the sense that he thought of that girl " gently stroking his shaft". No, it was _throat fucking her eager mouth with his cock_. It wasn't him "releasing himself inside her", it was _gushing cum into her pussy until it dribbled down her ass-crack_. These thoughts had intimidated her at first. Hell, they intimidated her still! It was just _so_ different from anything she would have ever expected from her kind and polite Ashikabi. Gregory was a _school teacher;_ he couldn't think in those kinds of words!

Oddly, even though these things intimidated her, Gregory's thoughts never _offended_ her. No matter how vulgar the word or how carnal the act that came to Gregory's mind during those moments, she never once felt the familiar impulse to retreat from a "pervert" in offense and anger.

And Madoka would never have guessed at how powerful the need to _thrust hard and deep_ was. She never would have imagined how almost-violent the drives were for a man. How — especially at the moment of climax — the almost-impossible-to-deny impulse was to _fuck_ her _pussy_ with his _cock_ as _hard_ as he could…

The things she felt and saw during the flashover from her Ashikabi's orgasm and fantasy let her understand now the looks that men gave her in a way that she would never have otherwise. She found that this understanding had changed how she felt about the inevitable glances she received, especially from older men. She _got_ it now. She knew that look was not just admiration in the way you might admire a work of art. No, it meant _desire_ and _lust_ sometimes so strong it clouded their minds.

She could appreciate those looks now. She no longer saw "creepy old perverts" ogling a young woman inappropriately; now she saw _men_ who, once upon a time, knew the feel and taste of lovely young flesh for themselves. They had felt and tasted and scented sex with beautiful nubile young women once upon a time but would never do so again.

She knew now first-hand\second-hand exactly how desirable that flesh appeared in their eyes. She found it sad — even tragic — that they would never again touch, taste, or smell that which they were wired to crave.

So now she found herself enjoying the idea that when they saw her they felt their blood stir. She found herself occasionally smiling at a middle-aged salaryman who she caught gazing at her breasts while on her bicycle, or winking at the old man who sold noodles from a cart near the safe house. She could sometimes _feel_ just how it brightened their day, to get a smile and a wave from that impossibly-beyond-their-reach girl who they had been eyeing.

Right now she could not help but giggle tiredly as she relaxed from the full body stretch and curled up on her side, smiling happily, and she wondered what it would be like to have sex with her Ashikabi instead of just piggybacking on his fantasies and orgasms in the shower.

She did not know what it would be like.

And that was growing more and more unacceptable. It could not be just like the flashes she caught of her Ashikabi's fantasies but still it would surely be phenomenal, mind blowing, sanity depriving.

And she _wanted_ that. She could not even remember now thinking that Gregory was old or that the idea of sex with him was "gross". Now she just burned for him because she knew how much he burned for her. She _knew._ She knew what he felt when he looked at her in a way no woman ever had before known what her man felt. And looking through Gregory O'Donnell's eyes at her own face and body was addictive!

There was nothing in the world she could look at that was as beautiful as what Gregory saw when he looked at her.

She thought for a moment about her journal that Gregory had asked her to keep about her feelings. She reached over and picked up her phone and began making notes in the encrypted Journal app she used. As she tapped away at the screen she was blushing furiously. She hoped no one ever read the things she had been writing in this journal for the last few weeks. Mishi would think Madoka the biggest slut in the world, a world-class pervert. Even the idea of a disinterested scientific aide reviewing the contents of her journal for the betterment of science was mortifying.

But Gregory asked so she wrote and wrote honestly.

After spending some moments letting sex flow from her mind and into the journal she then sat the phone down and pulled a pillow close to hug against her body. She then let her mind wander. How to convince Gregory to take that step, to go beyond the kissing they did each weekend? The kissing was nice. _Really_ nice. But she wanted more. She _needed_ more. But in spite of his wife leaving and the two being separated now Gregory still felt very married, as he had explained to her after one of their "Norito practice" kisses last weekend when she had hinted at wanting more.

Well that was where Gregory's lessons on "strategy" and "tactics" were helping her. She was wearing him down, she knew it.

Madoka hummed contentedly as she dozed away the morning.

:::NGFOM 3.1:::  
:::NGFOM 3.1:::

"Fourteen weeks, the loft and the garage under it. No lease, no paperwork, just me and my… friend… will be staying there. Mostly my friend." Gregory sat, a bit stiffly, in a chair before the desk of the third property owner he had spoken to today. He hoped this one worked out; it was in the Ebisu neighborhood of Shibuya Ward in west Shin Tokyo, south of where the O'Donnell's apartment was located, and actually closer to Tokyo Metro High than his apartment was.

The property owner, a young Japanese man who went by Arnaud, typically rented his loft and studio spaces by the day or week to tourists but was glad to talk to Gregory O'Donnell about a longer rental. No vacancy for four months and no need to market that unit was an excellent opportunity for his business. However, he frowned at the suggestion of no lease and no paperwork.

"Ah? Gregory-san, might you have a photo of your friend that you could share with me?"

Gregory, having anticipated this request, held up his phone then placed it on Arnaud's desk, leaving it propped up on its built-in stand. The animated photo of a silk-yukata clad Madoka, smiling happily among the gardens of the Shoun-ji temple and waving at the camera, caused Arnaud's eyebrows to lift for a moment. After a few seconds, the picture flipped to the next in the series of portraits and snapshots Gregory had assembled for this very purpose.

With an envious expression on his face, Arnaud said, "I believe I understand completely, Gregory-san. Fourteen weeks, with the garage as well, you said?"

"Yes. For permission to make use of this space for fourteen weeks, starting tomorrow January 19th and running through April 26th, you will be compensated 25% above the listed rent of ¥40,000 per week. Thus, rents paid of ¥700,000, in cash, in advance." Gregory paused for a moment, politely ignoring Arnaud's coughing fit, and then waited as the property owner took a sip of water. Arnaud-san was a young man for the sort of business he was in, so Gregory cut the man a bit of slack at his lack of complete, reserved, composure.

Gregory continued, "A security deposit of ¥1,000,000 would be an acceptable expectation, with the understanding that both parties fully intend this security deposit to be returned to myself at the end of the fourteen-week period, assuming of course that the property is surrendered back to you in good condition. For the additional trouble caused to you by meeting our non-negotiable requirements regarding confidentiality and discretion, please consider an offer of a further ¥300,000 to be presented to you personally Arnaud-san, in gratitude, at the end of the 14 week term."

 _That_ was as bluntly as he needed to spell out that Arnaud would be ¥300,000 poorer if he did _not_ keep Gregory's secrets for him. Arnaud-san was no fool; as soon as Gregory had mentioned cash in advance and no paper leases he understood what they were discussing. Gregory considered it a _discussion_ , not a _negotiation_ , given as he had opened with an offer that went significantly over the top of Arnaud's asking price, when the property owner was used to prospective tenants attempting to negotiate downwards and set his asking price accordingly.

Gregory had practiced this pitch in Japanese to make sure he had the oblique courtesies correct. He had not had to practice or pre-script Japanese in years but this _was_ a unique situation. Gregory was glad he was carrying on this negotiation in Japanese and here in Shin Tokyo; he doubted he would know where to begin if he were trying to rent a love nest for a mistress in, say, Chicago, or back home in Manchester. Here, there was practically a script for both parties to follow.

One might expect a landlord to try to take advantage of a potential tenant so obviously eager. After all, Gregory's opening with such a high offer might seem a sign of desperation. And it was true that one of the property owners Gregory had met already this day had tried just that.

Gregory had walked out of that office without as much as a polite goodbye. Raising the already high offer was not how the game was played. Either that property owner had not known it, and therefore revealed himself to be a fool and without sophistication, or he _had_ known but felt Gregory did not deserve to be treated as a civilized person.

Honorable Arnaud-san, though, was not such a fool. He understood right away that the high offer was the only offer, and recognized the script they would be performing from.

Gregory politely did not notice Arnaud's eyes widening at the mention of an additional ¥300,000. Gregory's base offer of ¥50,000 per week was already generous for a space that was only a concrete walled second-floor loft with a small, separate bathroom. It was, to be sure, a very _large_ loft, 50 square meters of space, or as Gregory still thought of it, about 540 square feet, which likely had spent time as a retail store at some time in the building's history. There was a car garage immediately downstairs that the Jeep would just barely fit into, which was an uncommon feature for a residence in Shin Tokyo, even if the affluent Shibuya Ward.

Today, for security's sake, he had parked the Jeep in a public parking lot near the property owner's office. He would likely continue to park the Jeep away from the loft when staying at the place, but having a garage available if needed was worth the extra rent MBI was paying.

It _was_ MBI's money, and that thought brought a smile to Gregory's face. MBI had cost him his daughter; he intended to cost MBI as much as possible in return.

The front windows of the loft looked out over a trendy, cluttered, pedestrian "back street" with retail shops and cafes all along on both sides. The back of the rental faced the sidewalk-lined concrete embankments of the Shibuya River. The Shibuya River was not much of a river; it hadn't been a real river in centuries. It was now more a concrete canal, but it was a feature of Shibuya Ward and the citizens would never tolerate it being paved over in order to make more square meters of land available, even with how incredibly dense the population was in Shin Tokyo.

The garage was accessed via the narrow street that ran along one side of the building.

It was a prime location for young, well off, tourists who would rent the place for a week while enjoying the party scene of Shibuya Ward. The loft was also an excellent place for a man to rent for his young mistress, who no doubt enjoyed the nightlife of Shibuya herself. That was the story, and the photo of gorgeous Madoka waving at the camera sold it perfectly.

Arnaud smiled politely and glanced again at the phone display resting on his desk, now rotating through a selection of images of Gregory-san's beautiful "friend". "It would be my great honor to provide shelter for you and your lovely friend, Gregory-san. You can absolutely depend upon my discretion."

"Good, Arnaud-san. The current furnishings are adequate at least for us to take possession of the loft. As we replace the current furnishings and appliances we will notify your office so that your people may remove the no longer needed items from the garage, where I will insure they are staged."

Arnaud smiled even wider. Gregory would pay for upgrades to the appliances and pay for the privilege? He might be able to swing a deal with this tenant where Arnaud could avoid paying for the next remodel of the rental space entirely!

Gregory stood and bowed. Arnaud stood and bowed. Arnaud pretended he was not counting how many stacks of ¥1,000 notes Gregory removed from his briefcase and stacked upon the desk. Gregory pretended to believe Arnaud had not exactly appraised the stacks to the last yen by eyeball alone.

By the time Gregory had transferred the fourteen weeks of pre-paid rent and the security deposit in cash to the property owner's desk in the form of seventeen bank-straps of one hundred ¥1,000 notes. Gregory was amused at what a large pile of money ¥1,700,000 really was.

Arnaud had fetched the keys for the doors, the security code for the alarms, and the garage access opener. As Arnaud prepared to write out a receipt for the large sum of cash, Gregory reminded him he preferred no paperwork of any sort for this transaction.

Arnaud stared at Gregory for a moment before commenting, "Gregory-san, you will forfeit any tax benefits entirely as you will have no receipt, but I sense that does not bother you. But… you will be leaving this office with no acknowledgment from my office that we have received these funds!"

Gregory smiled. Not having some proof of transfer of funds or proof of contractual obligations meant Gregory was accepting the entirety of the risks of this arrangement. He would not be able to prove to a court that he paid Arnaud the ¥1,700,000 in cash, nor could he prove what had been agreed between he and Arnaud as far as the facilities. Anyone taking upon themselves such serious one-sided risk bothered the businessman visibly, even when it was he who would be holding all of the cards the moment Gregory walked out of the office.

"I do understand your concern, Arnaud-san, and I appreciate it, truly. You and I know that I have paid you the sum agreed upon. You and I know what facilities we agreed upon and you and I know the dates on which we agreed. As I have complete confidence in your honorable nature I have nothing to worry about."

Arnaud considered Gregory's words then nodded once, then bowed rather deeply to Gregory. Rather more deeply than the man had bowed than when Gregory had entered the office.

"So. Thank you Arnaud-san. On behalf of my friend, as well. We both look forward to enjoying these facilities for the next few months. Ah, one more minor item. It is likely that we may have special requirements for communications access, internet and cable, which are beyond what is currently provided to the building. If so, I will gladly assume whatever expenses arise from upgrading such in your property management company's name."

"Of course, Gregory-san. You may contact me at any time with your requirements and I will be glad to handle everything on your behalf."

Gregory smiled politely.

Man it was _so_ awesome being kind-of-pretend rich! Gregory didn't think he'd ever get bored with Japanese businessmen kissing his ass in the language of formal Japanese courtesy, the likes of which mere school-teacher Gregory O'Donnell had never been judged worthy of.

:::NGFOM 3.1:::  
:::NGFOM 3.1:::

It was sunset when Gregory finally returned to the O'Donnell's apartment. It had taken personal discussions with three different property owners before he had finally met with the cooperative and understanding Arnaud, so his Saturday afternoon, as well as four days' worth of ATM cash withdrawals from the MBI card, had been sacrificed in the name of arranging a safe place for Madoka and himself. It was worth it, he thought, as even making plans in the O'Donnell's apartment was too risky, considering how compromised the place likely was to MBI.

As well, here, in the apartment he had shared with his family for five years, he had constant reminders of his absent wife and daughter. Reminders that did his emotional state no good. Gregory observed, again, that he'd still not taken down the Christmas decorations, left over from the disastrous last Christmas he'd likely ever spend with his daughter.

Refocusing on the present, Gregory smiled at the fact that the "back street loft" rental that he and Madoka now had was just the sort of uniquely Tokyo living space he'd fantasized of, if his financial and domestic circumstances were different (and if he were a twenty-something, worldly, bohemian, photographer instead of a middle aged schoolteacher).

Now his financial and domestic circumstances were, indeed, very different and though he still wasn't a twenty-something, worldly, bohemian, photographer, he at least had a lot of extremely good photographs of his twenty-something gorgeous girlfriend. Or Sekirei. Or… well, whatever Madoka was to him now.

He felt that he _needed_ to step outside of the comfortable box he'd built for himself to live in. He'd have been content to live out the rest of his life on the track it had been following, more than content, actually. But if he had to participate in this idiotic Sekirei Plan, if he was going to see everything he had worked hard to build for himself and for his family destroyed, one inevitable piece at a time, by the insanity of Hiroko Minaka, well, the least Gregory O'Donnell should get out of it was a few months of a different lifestyle. He'd already taken an "until further notice" leave of absence from his online gaming guild association, declined the position of "assistant sponsor" to the American Media Student Club at the school that he'd held for five years now, and now he was taking steps to live at least part time somewhere new.

"Mado-chan! You here?" Gregory shut the door behind him then sat his briefcase down next to the computer desk in the living room. He heard Madoka's voice from the back of the apartment.

"Yes, Gregory-kun, one minute!"

Speaking Japanese in the apartment, where for five years the hard and fast family rule had been English Only inside and Japanese outside. Another reminder of the fact that this apartment wasn't really his family's home anymore even if he kept treating it as such.

Sanjunana Madoka, or more accurately Sekirei number 37 Madoka, welcomed him back from work with a hug, then she stretched up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. A cheek he turned to her for kissing, having learned that if he gave her a chance to kiss him on the lips she would usually take it, regardless of his rule about them not engaging in "inappropriate" behavior in his family's apartment.

"Hi, Mado-chan. You look lovely today." And boy, did she! Wearing a pair of really really tight denim shorts and a white cotton tank-top style shirt, she looked better than the hope of heaven. "Did you get the paperwork from the apartment management company?"

Madoka tapped a folder that was lying on his computer desk. "Yes, and even though the manager grumbled about how 'irregular' this is, he drew up the 12 month lease extension on this apartment for you and took the MBI Platinum card to charge the entire lease to the card's account. I think being paid in advance for a whole year was a unique situation for him, Gregory-kun."

Laughing, Gregory agreed. "No doubt. And being paid on a credit card for a lease was probably something completely new for him as well. Well, we did wonder how much that 'unlimited' MBI Platinum card was good for. Now we know it will at least allow the payment for an apartment for one year. Now we don't have to worry about this place for a long while, no matter what might happen with my job. It's good to have that off my mind for the foreseeable future."

Gregory set his old "compromised" phone down on the coffee table alongside his personal tablet he took back and forth to school. "Oh, and we had three new hits on the Ashikabi-Sekirei social media pages. One on Global Homie and two on Google+. Still no one who's visited the pages has tried to reach us with the contact emails listed, but we're getting more hits on the pages so it's bound to happen soon."

Madoka had gone to the kitchen to fetch herself a can of green Pokka tea and Gregory a bottle of Diet Coke and made agreeing noises from there. By the time she'd joined him on the couch Gregory had taken off his jacket and tie and had put the new apartment lease extension paperwork away in the hardcopy filing cabinet next to the computer desk.

He turned on the large wall display and queued up a random ambient music playlist to provide some background noise. He smiled at Makoda and waved her over closer on the couch, then leaned over to put his lips right next to her ear and whispered, "I found a place. It is ours starting tomorrow, through the end of April. It will cost us almost two million yen of the cash we've accumulated but it's worth it. Oh, and he's having So-net run dedicated six gigabit fiber optic service to the place, with the account in his company name so our names are not involved."

He pulled back and raised his eyebrows at her. Gregory held out his new Sony RX1000 camera that he'd purchased for taking snapshots, since he could no longer trust the camera on his phone to be secure. The RX1000 was nowhere near the quality of the Nikon v10 he considered his "real" camera, but the Nikon v10 was also a bit of a beast for taking quick photos A "snapshot" camera it was not. So, the small, pocket sized, RX1000 was their most used camera now. They only used their phones for taking snapshots they wanted MBI to see, on the assumption that MBI had access to all of their cellular accounts.

Gregory flipped the display on the back of the RX1000 around to show her the pictures he'd taken of the studio, the garage, the quaint retail "back street" that the loft looked out over, and the view from the back door, out over the narrow concrete embankments that made up the Shibuya River.

Madoka grinned widely at the pictures and then gave him a thumbs-up gesture. She then leaned over to whisper into his ear, holding the back of his head to pull him close, which also had the "completely unplanned" result of pointing his eyes right down at her chest. He was so glad she had lost the habit of wearing a bra, over the last few weeks, as the nipple bumps poking at the front of her shirt clearly semaphored her happiness.

It was a view he _really_ liked. However, it also made it damn difficult to hear what she said.

" _God, she has the most perfect tits ever. In the entire history of tits."_

"That's wonderful! And we can use the card to buy futon and appliances and décor for the place! I'm so excited, it is our own place! My Ashikabi and me! That is such wonderful news Gregory-kun!" she whispered in his ear in a rush while bouncing up and down in her seat. Gregory began to feel a bit light headed; the view of bouncing, nipply, Madoka breasts into which his face was almost pressed could possibly be considered life threatening to a man his age.

" _Oh, God! I'm going to stroke out. Is it getting dark in here? That really would be my luck; killed by amazing tits."_

He made a note to ask his doctor if he were healthy enough for sexual activity. God knew he couldn't know if he was or not from the way his marriage bed had been used for nothing but sleeping for the last few years.

Madoka pulled back from his ear and almost made to kiss him before she obviously remembered his rule about no kissing in the O'Donnell's apartment.

He was still uncomfortable kissing his beautiful Sekirei, even with the excuse of practicing for her Norito. And he flatly refused to do _anything_ of the sort in the apartment that he still considered his and his family's home. Gregory took great pains to not treat Madoka any different, at the apartment, now than he did when his family was still here.

This was one of the reasons they had spent every weekend since New Year's enjoying a different five-star hotel. There was also the fact that staying at five-star hotels and enjoying their room service menus and their restaurants and their spas was a _lot_ of fun when you are not the one paying the bill.

God bless MBI. But only the Sekirei Plan Budget department.

Madoka leaned back and settled onto the couch, her happy expression changing to a frown. She held up her phone to Gregory and asked, "Gregory-kun, is there a way you can make it so my phone cannot receive phone calls or text messages from a specific number?"

He looked at the phone then at Madoka's unhappy expression and nodded. "Mishi?"

Madoka looked away and nodded. "She is very mad at me and, I am sorry, but you as well, especially with actually returning to America yesterday with Karen. I think she had hoped to the very end that you would let her stay here in spite of Karen's wishes, perhaps showing up at the airport at the last minute to save her. She is… well. She is very mad."

Gregory agreed, his own expression turning sober, "I know she did. I wanted to keep her here. I know that's what she wanted and not for bad reasons. And I did think about it, I did. I thought about it and drew up lists of pros and cons… But if I had challenged Karen's right to take Mishi back home it would have been the start of a huge legal fight, one I would have to pay for a lawyer out of my salary, it's not like we could use the MBI Card for it, and would have the Japanese courts soon looking into every aspect of my financial and home life. It would be a complete mess, no matter what the end result turned out to be. I doubt Mishi will ever forgive me but I just couldn't stop Karen from taking her back to New Hampshire. I'm sorry that she blames you, Mado-chan. I know you were close to her."

Madoka nodded, still looking away. She mumbled, "She could have been my Ashikabi. And she was my first and only regular, you know, _human_ , friend."

The voice mails and text messages on his own phone from the daughter he dearly loved assured him that she hated him with every fiber of her being and that she would never forgive him for his part in her mother uprooting her and forcing her to move back to New Hampshire.

Gregory treated his feelings about Mishi the same way he had been treating his feelings about Karen. Locking them away in a box labeled "can't fix this right now". If he allowed it, he would end up a weeping, drunk, mess over the way things had devolved. So he locked it all away; every time he found himself thinking about Karen or Mishi, he shut the lid on that box as hard as he could.

Can't fix this right now. Lock it away until… some other time.

Maybe, someday, he would have the opportunity to meet the people responsible for the Sekirei Plan and let them know just how much harm they had done. Gregory did not consider himself a violent or vicious man, but when he thought of the messages that he had received from his distraught daughter and how he would never be able to repair the damage done to their previously close relationship… he _hoped_ he had the opportunity to impress on those responsible _exactly_ how he felt about them.

He could only imagine how vicious Mishi's messages must have gotten to push Madoka to take this step, blocking all of her communications. To cut off all contact now was a sign of desperation on Madoka's part.

"I'll take care of it right now, Mado-chan. Why don't you pack a bag for tonight, we've got reservations at the Tokyo Westin, just a few blocks from the new place."

"Okay, Gregory-kun, and thank you."

So much for the happy atmosphere. Maybe the Tokyo Westin had a skilled staff masseuse who could be engaged for cheering Madoka and himself back up before their dinner reservations.

The thought of MBI treating him and his lovely Sekirei to a much-needed stress-relieving hour of massage brightened Gregory's mood all by itself.

:::NGFOM 3.1:::  
:::NGFOM 3.1:::

Tuesday, 21 January 2020

Late evening, Gregory found himself reading over his notes on the Farsense tests he and Madoka had finally completed, in the Notebook. The two had just returned to the O'Donnell apartment from the loft, where he and Madoka had been assembling the new king-sized bed they had purchased (Gregory told himself they had bought it for Madoka to sleep on; Madoka told herself they'd bought it for the two of them to sleep on). Madoka was reading something on her tablet; it looked like a gossip page about one of the many J-Pop groups that she liked. At least Gregory thought that's what it looked like. His awareness of Japanese idol culture was pretty limited, by design.

The fast tempo music playing through the living room speakers was another clue, as it was absolutely from his daughter's file library on the main server and not from his music library. He'd shown Madoka weeks ago how to navigate the music folders on the server so she could play whatever she wanted, though at the time he'd assumed she would be playing her selections on her tablet for her own personal enjoyment rather than through the main sound system in the living room.

Gregory squinted his eyes to try to make out the file name on the wall monitor, which was showing a picture of the guy… or girl… Gregory couldn't tell rightly, who was singing as well as the information about the song and artist. SID? AKi? Gregory shook his head and turned his attention back to the Notebook and tried to tune out the music. He _refused_ to be that old guy who complained about someone's music being too loud.

Even if it _was_ too loud.

After checking off the Farsense notes and experiments, Gregory turned a few pages in the Notebook to review what he'd written about the Sekirei and their adaptability.

" _Madoka claims there was never any discussion about what would happen if a Sekirei was bonded to an Ashikabi who she wasn't compatible with. Perhaps this was due to idealistic young women failing to understand that people are rarely perfectly matched and always have differences that cause them to grate on each other when living in close quarters. But it was also never mentioned by the MBI staff and all evidence indicates the MBI staff was surprisingly well informed on the subjects of winging, Ashikabi, and the Norito. Surprisingly well informed for an organization which supposedly had no Sekirei yet released into the city to find their Ashikabi, much less have the opportunity to learn about her Norito powers."_

" _In the case of Madoka and myself I've noticed that over the month that has passed since she bonded with me that her behavior has changed in some dramatic ways. I can't clearly identify the cause of these changes but I can certainly point out things she does now which she most definitely did not do a month ago."_

" _Most obvious among these changes is her increasing flirting with me, through both (surprisingly) witty teasing of just the sort I like and by way of wearing revealing clothing around the apartment more often, on some occasions making it not only easy to catch her topless but almost guaranteeing it. The nervous young woman I found across the street from that donut shop did not seem the sort to behave like this, especially towards an older man. That the Ashikabi-Sekirei relationship is intended, on the Sekirei part at least, to be a mate relationship indicates that there's an obvious motivation for such efforts on her part. But does this intended mate relationship define her behavior even with an Ashikabi she would have no reason to be attracted to and, indeed, previously was not attracted to at all?"_

" _Madoka's change in behavior likely consists of more than just flirtation and her now seemingly to be attracted to her middle-aged Ashikabi. How much of this change is natural relaxation in getting to know someone, a factor more pronounced in Japanese culture than my native culture due to the reservation of the Japanese in general, and how much is due to other factors? Do the Sekirei sense what their Ashikabi want or need in a partner and change themselves to suit that perception? Do they do this more than Terran Humans do, since it's hardly unknown for people to try to change to suit their partners?"_

Gregory paused in his review and took a sip from his can of Diet Coke, stealing a look at the extremely attractive blonde girl relaxing at the other end of the couch. She'd changed into more comfortable clothes as soon as they'd arrived back at the apartment; more comfortable clothes, in this case, always seeming to be defined by how much less skin they covered. Gregory appreciated the view; it was, after all, a superb body she was showing off. He wondered, however, at the change in behavior that those clothes represented and at what might be spurring that change.

While any young woman living with an older man could easily conclude that showing off skin regularly would get his attention and his appreciation, how many would actually do it? And how many would instinctively react to the gaze of the man by covering up more instead of showing off more?

Gregory forced himself to stop staring at Madoka's breasts, covered only by a thin cotton chemise with delightfully visible nipples through the fabric. " _Man, does she have great tits or what? Argh, stop it, Gregory! Focus, Gregory, focus."_

He had a suspicion that the Sekirei changed to suit their Ashikabi, and that the Sekirei were unaware of this happening, or at least the extent to which it happened. They certainly seemed unaware of the mechanism of _how_ it happened, at least with his one singular data point. He needed a way to test this without doing any harm to his Sekirei if he was right. What could he test with? See if her favorite color would change? Change what kinds of clothes she liked to wear?

He gazed at the large monitor on the wall showing the picture of the J-Pop group singing the current song selection, then decided on a plan to test his fledgling theory. If he was right and he could deliberately change some aspect of his Sekirei's personality simply by focusing on _wanting_ that aspect to change, then maybe he could end up with better music in the background out of this.

That was safer than focusing on wanting her to wear even less clothes. Probably.

Picking up his own tablet, Gregory tapped his way through screens until he was viewing a list of the music folders on _his_ section of the main file server. Scrolling down the list of musical genres he had accumulated over the years, he picked one that he felt was extremely unlikely for a teenage Japanese girl to ever become a fan of, then he picked up his pen and wrote in the Notebook.

" _Sekirei Plasticity Theory_ _: All Sekirei, being metapsychically sensitive to a greater degree than is common for Terran Humans, subconsciously receive, through their metapsychic senses, the desires, wants, and preferences of their Ashikabi. Without conscious awareness of the process the Sekirei changes their behavior, attitudes, preferences, likes and dislikes, based on the information they receive from their Ashikabi through this subconscious metapsychic communication."_

Gregory stopped and considered how to go about his test.

" _Currently the only kind of music Madoka selects for herself to listen to is J-Pop and K-Pop, all selections being individuals and groups from no more than 10 years ago. We've never had a conversation on the subject that I can recall nor do I believe I've ever indicated a dislike for such music, though it's not the sort of thing I ever select for myself to listen to and she's likely aware of that fact. Starting this evening, I will spend 10 minutes every 8 hours doing nothing but focusing on my desire for my mate to enjoy 1970's era American Country and Western music. I will note if and when Madoka's musical selections change, if they ever do, and if there has been no change within a week I will increase the amount of time dedicated to inwardly focusing on my desire for her to love "Urban Cowboy" era C &W music…"_

:::NGFOM 3.1:::

" _It sure would be great if my Sekirei loved Urban Cowboy country music. I sure wish Madoka liked The Oakridge Boy's songs. I'd love to have a Sekirei who thinks Anne Murray is the best singer ever…"_

:::NGFOM 3.1:::

Saturday, January 25, 2020

A week after acquiring the keys for the "safe house", as Gregory and Madoka had taken to calling the new place, it was mostly furnished and they had a good start on laying in supplies. In his spare time at school, Gregory made lists of things for Madoka to purchase with the MBI Card during the day while he was teaching. To counter MBI's assumed automatic-electronic monitoring they had developed tactics for supplying the safe house without leaving an easy trail for MBI to follow. Madoka had instructions either to pick up the items directly from the store herself, if they were small enough to carry, or to have them delivered to a rent-a-storage garage in the Ebisu neighborhood which they had rented that was not far from the safe house but was also not in the same block. When needed, Gregory would find strong young men who were willing to carry heavy objects in boxes from the storage unit to the safe house for quick cash. He didn't want her doing the hiring, so she left it to him to handle, in the evenings after he arrived at the loft from teaching all day.

Gregory had told her that he did not _know_ if the steps they were taking to keep the safe house off MBI's radar were effective. They were "reasonable" precautions, he said. He did not take his cell phone to the loft and he had not yet needed to park the Jeep in the garage. Madoka's own Samsung cell phone was not brought to the loft either; it had been in communication with his own and with Mishi's, so she and Gregory assumed it was compromised.

This made Madoka unhappy, as her phone was something of a prized possession. It had been a Christmas gift, from her Ashikabi. The first and only Christmas gift she had ever received, actually. But Gregory insisted that it was necessary to keep it away from the safe house, so she left it at the apartment if she was going to be at the loft.

These were all steps she and Gregory could take that would make automatic electronic surveillance and recording more prone to error. And that was their goal, increase the bad data in MBI's records. They could not disappear from MBI's records; they could not purge MBI's databases of what information they had on Madoka and Gregory. But if that data was inaccurate and misleading? That was actually almost as good.

In some ways it was better than disappearing from the system.

Madoka questioned Gregory's assumptions about the nature of MBI's surveillance. He'd had to flat out order her to question him about it, actually. But he insisted it was critical his own thinking be double-checked by someone else, even if that person wasn't particularly sophisticated in these matters.

Gregory kept insisting that _he_ wasn't sophisticated in these matters either. He was just a schoolteacher who had an eclectic range of interests and hobbies. So Madoka's observations and questions were just as valid as his own, or so he continued to maintain.

She thought MBI would have people watching them instead of all of this complicated data stuff. Gregory explained that the "complicated data stuff" was actually very straightforward data collection. And he'd agreed that if MBI had actual agents following Gregory and herself and reporting their locations and actions, then none of this obfuscation would do much good.

 _But_ if that _were_ the case then nothing they could do would help anyway. The pair of them weren't going to avoid actual full-time, skilled, agents that had been tasked with tracking their activities so it would be silly to even try, wasteful to set up tactics for avoiding such observation. Even professional spies and underworld agents couldn't be constantly proof against teams of human assets trained to observe and record their targets.

And neither Gregory nor Madoka were the Super-Secret-Agent-Man types, as Gregory jokingly called it.

Gregory told her he thought it was unlikely that MBI had invested in enough human resources to have them tracked by actual people 24 hours a day 7 days a week. This was the 21st century, using technology to keep track of… well, everything, was ingrained in every level of society. It was less expensive, less prone to error, easier to monitor. And he had little doubt that this mentality was ingrained in MBI's Intelligence division as it was everywhere else. No watchdog security force could resist being able to go to the database and pull pages and pages of specific, detailed, reports on exactly where the targets phones were, what numbers they called, for how long, what the MBI Platinum Cards had been used for, when, where, what delivery instructions if any on any purchases.

So she and Gregory operated from the assumption that MBI's intelligence service tracked Ashikabi and Sekirei by electronic means through their phones and other appliances which had GPS and internet connectivity. They very likely had a very sophisticated database for not only _tracking_ the data they were collecting but also expanding upon and collating that data. The tools they had for analysis of the data they were collecting were probably their most powerful means of keeping track of what was going on with the Sekirei and their Ashikabi, Gregory figured.

Gregory had told Madoka that he had no doubt MBI was aware that Mishi and Karen were now in New Hampshire, as an example. From his phone, they no doubt had acquired Mishi and Karen's phone data, tagging those phones numbers and GPS ID's in a database as family. Then the database was notified, automatically and constantly, of where Mishi and Karen were, separately, via the GPS location on their phones. And when the two had returned to New Hampshire and acquired new U.S. service phones, those phones were immediately compromised when address books and other data was copied from the old Japanese phones to the new American ones.

There was also the possibility of audio and video recordings at the O'Donnell apartment from installed "bugs" (which Gregory never located in searches but could not assume weren't there anyway, as he wasn't a trained Super-Secret-Agent-Man). Gregory had also calculated that it was highly likely that MBI collected GPS and audio records, and possibly video records, from the Jeep, all of it tagged with "#37" and "Gregory O'Donnell", all sorted, filed, referenced, and cross-referenced in the MBI database with every other factoid the assumed system was collecting.

Then, if someone in Security tapped in a query on their handheld, they could very likely pull up a comprehensive report on everything MBI had on #37. Likely, the report would be a high-level overview, a summary, then the Security agent could easily drill down into any specifics they needed with just a few clicks. A list of every person in Tokyo Gregory O'Donnell knew? Their addresses? Their employers? How often Gregory's phone was tagged at those acquaintances homes? Any locations outside of work where Gregory spent any time with any of his friends and acquaintances? Which route Gregory favored driving home after work? What grocery store did he shop at, what did he buy there typically?

Gregory told her he was not any kind of real database designer but even he could see how he would put together a system like that, just using the constant location services almost every phone had now. Tack an additional GPS reporter onto the vehicles any of the Ashikabi and their family had and you have an even better picture of their habits and routines.

And if _he_ could think of how to do that much, the very expensive and very competent data analyst's MBI employed could likely produce _miracles_ of information from mere wisps of input.

All this added up to why Gregory had scoffed at the idea of becoming completely invisible to MBI. Just refusing to use the MBI Card? Laughably inadequate. It would take an extreme level of "going off the grid" to truly disappear and even then the most they would likely accomplish would be to force MBI to assign human resources to tracking them and their activities. More expensive than depending on an automated data collection system, but hardly beyond MBI's resources.

Disappearing well enough to avoid whatever human resources MBI could put on the full time job of tracking an Ashikabi and Sekirei, if MBI was forced to go that far? Please. Not unless you were Jason Bourne.

So the best plan, in Gregory's opinion, was to keep providing electronic information to MBI about where their phones went, where the Jeep went, how long they stayed at the apartment and how rarely they traveled around the city. Leaving their phones at the apartment when they left for the safe house and traveling by rail or bus or bicycle instead of taking the Jeep.

Provide MBI with plenty of information, but make sure it is worthless or incorrect information. That was their strategy for avoiding MBI's _intelligence_ arm.

Avoiding MBI's _enforcement_ arm was a very different sort of challenge and one they had no information on, so they simply ignored it, for now.

What does MBI know? How effectively can MBI exert force upon what it knows?

Those were the key questions that Gregory insisted they needed to focus on, if they were going to survive the Sekirei Plan.

Madoka had asked Gregory if he thought there was any chance MBI had some way to track _her_ location in real time, like he had shown her that he could do with their phones using the maps app and the phones GPS. Gregory had explained how the phones constantly reported their GPS location back to Google's central mapping database and their social media services, through the cellular or Wi-Fi internet connections on the phones, and how this reporting required the phone to make that cellular or Wi-Fi connection persistently, which was an energy intensive task.

There were many Wi-Fi nodes throughout Tokyo, to be sure, and there were cellular towers _everywhere_ , but it still took power for a device to connect to a cellular data network and send its GPS information to a server. For their phones, with the best batteries available, they still had to plug them up to a charger regularly, sometimes more than once a day, due to the constant drain that functions such as cellular data connections and Wi-Fi data connections caused.

Gregory also told her he thought it was unlikely any such device would be set up to connect to random Wi-Fi nodes to dump its location data. Or any other data it might be made to collect about the Sekirei in question. When she asked why not, since it was a lot less battery intensive to connect to a Wi-Fi node than establish a cellular data connection, Gregory brought her over to look at the screen for the big black computer in the living room. He showed her a list of items, each one with odd names and a lot of numbers associated with them. He explained this was a real-time list from the telecom service's internet router in the O'Donnell apartment. Every item on the O'Donnell household network was listed in some way. And he knew what every one of these devices was. He pointed at one named "micwv" and said, "Even that one, the microwave oven in the kitchen".

And there was no device on the network like "Mdka37". Or _any other_ unknown device. Could a thing send data without "being on" the network? No, everything on any network had to have some sort of address; otherwise, it could not send or receive data.

If, and it was a big if, MBI had managed to implant some sort of GPS tracking device in the Sekirei, the range on its ability to 'reach out' and make a connection to some form of cellular or wireless internet service in the physical area around the device would be extremely limited. The hypothetical tracking device could not be recharged as their phones were, the Sekirei weren't plugging themselves into a wall charger every night, so even an extremely close range limit, such as one meter, would be problematic if it was to operate for more than say, a month.

Overall, Gregory felt there was not much chance MBI could have real time location tracking of all the Sekirei via some implanted GPS device. If there was such a device, it would have very limited range, as in a couple meters, and it likely would have to utilize some of the Kouten technology MBI had acquired, just to power the thing for the many months of the Sekirei Plan.

Madoka felt that matched up with what she had overhead about the Sekirei Plan's "Second Phase", where the city would be closed off, with checkpoints manned by MBI Security wielding handheld scanners to detect any hidden Sekirei in vehicles. Those handheld scanners were to be used for searching vehicles leaving the city, at roadblocks, implying a distinctly limited range, but also strongly implying there was _something_ in the Sekirei to detect.

After Madoka pointed this out, Gregory reluctantly agreed. There was probably _something_ embedded in the individual Sekirei. And it could be detected by MBI, though the range was likely very limited.

Gregory ruefully ended their discussion on the subject by pointing out that if MBI _did_ have real-time location and condition information on all of the Sekirei, wherever the Sekirei was in the city and at all times, then it was being tracked through means so advanced that it might as well be called magic. Therefore, there was not a damn thing they could reasonably do about it, so there was not much point in worrying about it.

Worry about what we can fix, ignore everything else. This was rapidly becoming their motto.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Today, while Gregory was at his Saturday class, Madoka only had one item on her to-do list, and that was to hit the ATM at one of the post offices for her daily ¥500,000 withdrawal. Then she was going to the safe house to stash the funds in the heavy safe that she and Gregory had bolted to the loft's steel beam underfloor braces.

No need to trust Arnaud-san further than necessary, after all. Even with the drain on their cash from renting the safe house there was still something like ¥16,000,000 in their cash reserves, quite the temptation to anyone who might be snooping around when they were not at the loft. Better _safe_ than sorry, Gregory had said, as they were bolting the heavy safe to the building's structure. She had smacked him for saying it and wondered if he would ever get past his impulse to make what Mishi had termed "terrible Dad Jokes".

She wondered if any of her sister Sekirei were having problems with securing the cash they withdrew from the ATM's.

Madoka carried her shiny, new, Cervelo R8 bicycle on her shoulder as she exited the O'Donnell's apartment. Carried it easily, as it weighed less than 6kg total, which Gregory assured her was an amazing accomplishment of materials science and engineering. After locking the door, Madoka threw a leg over the seat and zipped down the sidewalk and into the apartment's parking lot, heading to the post office.

She enjoyed the feeling of freedom the bicycle gave her. It was not the same as owning a car but the ability to just get on her bicycle and go wherever she wanted was a new feeling for Madoka and she savored it. When Gregory helped her pick out the Cervelo last week, at a local bicycle shop, she had been shocked at the ¥700,000 price tag. Gregory just laughed and handed the MBI card to the very happy sales clerk.

She was unsure about operating a vehicle by her muscles alone, given she knew that of all the Sekirei she was among the weakest. But after the bicycle lessons from Gregory last week, he'd pronounced that she was in extremely good physical condition compared to anyone he knew, including the students he had who were in athletics at the High School.

After a bit of testing on the bicycle, Gregory started making notes in the Notebook about how even the "weakest" of the Sekirei seemed to have a physique that was at the top end of the human range when it came to endurance, agility, and strength. He said he wanted more subjects to evaluate before making a declaration on the matter, but still, he insisted she, at least, was in peak condition for a human her apparent age.

This made Madoka feel very good about herself. Living her whole life thinking of herself as a weakling and as helpless had not done her self-image any favors. Finding out that she could participate in, and maybe even win, any of the bicycle racing events in Tokyo made her a big fan of bicycling.

And the bicycling clothes she bought looked great on her! At least, judging from the looks her Ashikabi gave her they did. And the looks from the pedestrians she went past seemed to confirm her Ashikabi's opinion on the subject.

Which also made her feel pretty good.

:::NGFOM 3.1:::  
:::NGFOM 3.1:::

Madoka was pedaling at a very fast 50 km/h, whizzing past cars as she cut between lanes of traffic and maneuvered between the traffic and the sidewalks.

She ignored the occasional shout or car horn protesting her reckless riding. It was just too much fun going full out, pushing the Cervelo bike as far as she could. It was almost five kilometers driving from the O'Donnell's apartment in the north of Shibuya Ward to the safe house in the south end of Shibuya, in the Ebisu neighborhood. This trip typically took Gregory about 20 minutes, in the Jeep.

Madoka's best time on her bicycle, so far, was 14 minutes, 30 seconds.

Right now she was heading south on the long straightaway of Meiji Prefecture Street that ran alongside the Yamanote Rail Line. This two-lane street was the last good stretch before getting to the safe house and it was her favorite part of the trip. It was almost exactly one kilometer of straight road, so she could push herself and her bicycle to the limit. There were a fair number of vehicles on the street and there were several major intersections along it, but traffic laws and red lights were for the weak! If she paid attention to laws and sanity then she would never get her transit time down to under 10 minutes, a goal Gregory had flatly declared impossible.

She'd see about that.

Hence, her breakneck speed of 50 kmh as she blazed through the third major intersection on Meiji Prefecture Street. Another 500 meters and she would have to slow down as her route took her through the narrow side streets of the Ebisu district. She felt good about the pace she had been able to keep so far; with any luck, she might hit the safe house at the fourteen-minute flat mark today!

Madoka's trim legs pumped the pedals forcefully, her breathing was deep and controlled, the cool January air was preventing much sweat from building up on her skin. She felt _good_ ; the physical effort was not draining her, she did not struggle to peddle faster or get enough air, her body and the bicycle were like one perfect machine, operating seamlessly. Her awareness of the vehicles around her, especially the ones around her and the ones crossing Meiji Prefecture Street, was complete, total. She was connected to the street, the bicycle, the cars, the pedestrians, in such a way that there was no effort involved in navigating through intersections and traffic. It simply happened.

Madoka spared a thought for wondering if Gregory felt like this when he was driving his Jeep. She did not think he did, as he seemed to spend a lot more effort monitoring the mirrors, swiveling his head left and right to watch as he drove through intersections. Maybe this feeling of being one with every element of her effort was a characteristic of her Farsight. She would have to mention it to Gregory when he met her at the safe house after his class was over.

Something… there was something coming towards her, fast, but where…

"Aiye!" Madoka shrieked as she wrenched the bicycle to the right, cutting in front of and barely avoiding an oncoming delivery truck, and then she pulled hard to the left so as to avoid going off the road and up the rocky embankment that led up to the train tracks which ran alongside the street. Beside her, and then rapidly falling behind, she just barely saw, and then heard, _something_ hit the blacktop pavement of the street, hard, right where she would have been if she had not blindly dodged out of the way at the last second.

She dared a glance behind her to see if she could make out anything about what had almost killed her. In the fraction of a second she could afford to look backwards, all she made out was a female with long hair, and bare legs and arms, crouching in the middle of the street, watching Madoka now speeding away. That the woman then leapt straight up and out of sight confirmed the sensation Madoka had that a Sekirei had indeed found her and was now trying to catch her.

"No, no, no!" Madoka shouted as she pulled back out onto the street, launching herself straight down the centerline as fast as she could peddle. Thankfully at this time of morning, on a Saturday, Meiji Prefecture Street was not packed with traffic. There were a few delivery trucks pulled over in front of retail stores, to the left of the street, but otherwise the street was mostly empty all the way to Koshin Bridge Road, now a few hundred meters ahead. Madoka bent down low and pumped her legs hard. She could hear, over the wind in her ears, the tires of the Cervelo making a high-pitched hum as the bike screamed towards Koshin Bridge Road at over 70 kmh.

Past that intersection the traffic got heavier. Madoka weaved in and out of the southbound cars and trucks, blowing through intersections without any concern for cross traffic. What was the worst that could happen? A truck would hit her? No worse than what would happen if the Sekirei pursuing her caught her. Probably better, actually. A truck would only kill her.

So she peddled faster and harder.

She could Farsense that her pursuer was up on the rooftops of the six and seven story buildings that lined the left side of Meiji Prefecture Street. She spared the time to mentally thank Gregory for insisting they spend some of their time together over the last few weeks practicing her Farsense metafaculty. That practice allowed her, now, to use the generally disrespected metapsychic ability in an "undirected" way, without the need for concentration, which was effective for keeping track of her immediate surroundings and, it seemed, awareness of her fellow Sekirei.

A few times, she heard, or just Sensed, the pursuing Sekirei drop down onto the street in an attempt to strike Madoka. Each time her pursuer had misjudged how far ahead of the bicycle she needed to aim her leap, but Madoka knew her luck was unlikely to continue forever. At this point, she was gasping for breath and her legs were starting to burn. Five hundred meters at 70 kmh was apparently pushing her limits.

She _had_ to get off this street. It was too open, thanks to the rail line embankment on the right, and it was now obvious that she was not going to outpace her pursuer. If she could cut off this street while the Sekirei chasing her was atop the buildings or in the midst of a jump then she might lose her long enough to get to the safe house. Madoka could not remember any specific rule against attacking someone in his or her home, but she did not think such a thing would be permitted; that would be craziness, mayhem!

If she could get to the TR305, the last big intersection before the Ebisu neighborhood of their safe house, she might be able to cut left and then somehow get to the deep concrete channel that was the Shibuya River. She had never seen much water in the narrow channel and Gregory laughed that it was still called a river at all. He said it should be called a ditch. There were flat walkways along either side of the steep concrete embankments, for city workers to use and for pedestrians to enjoy. The safe house had a back door that opened out onto those walkways in fact.

She did not have enough time to second-guess herself; the busy intersection for TR305 was coming up very fast. Too fast.

Madoka had only a split-second to be scared of the speed she had managed to push her Cervelo to, however. The fleeing Sekirei and her high-tech bicycle flashed into the six-lane intersection, leaning over as hard as she dared, turning left. She _barely_ managed to keep the bicycle on the street; traveling this fast made turning wide a real problem, she now realized. Though she had managed to keep on the street and avoided hitting the sidewalk at her now-somewhat-reduced speed of 50 kmh, she realized that if she did not avoid the oncoming traffic she was now heading directly into she could be seriously injured, if not outright terminated. She pulled the bike farther to the right, trying to fit between the oncoming cars and the curb of the street.

She just needed to get a little way down the TR305, to where it crossed over the Shibuya River.

There! She spotted the flat, railed, bridge, just ahead! No! There were tall railings and safety fences to keep pedestrians out of the riverway! Madoka weaved her way off of the TR305, further to the right, ignoring the pedestrians who shouted and dove out of her way. She crossed a small one-lane side street, and then sped straight ahead into a small motorcycle-scooter parking lot. At the back of the lot she could just see a waist-high concrete wall, past which was the open space leading down to the Shibuya River.

Now braking hard enough to make the Cervelo's tires skip and bounce, she was still moving forward at a good clip when she reached the concrete wall. Madoka turned the bike as best she could and threw out her bare left leg towards the barrier.

In the split second that she'd had to come up with a plan, as she zipped into the small parking lot and saw the back of it was blocked entirely, she had thought perhaps she could plant a foot and jump herself and the bicycle over the wall. She did not have any idea if she could keep the bicycle going in the right direction or if she would lose control as she went over the wall but it was all she had.

Her foot hit the top of the concrete wall, the soft, sticky, rubber of her biking shoe gripped, and she pushed downwards with her left leg as hard as she could. Madoka's thigh muscles flexed brutally, the pressure on the tendons of her left knee and of her ankle was tremendous, but she had just enough to make it. Her forward momentum, coupled with the upward thrust from her foot on the concrete, practically _launched_ her, and the bicycle she was holding onto with both hands, up, over the barrier, and into the space beyond.

As Madoka went airborne, her body flying one way, the Cervelo tumbling away another, both arcing beautifully upwards, then across, then downwards, she experienced a moment of crystal clarity. A flash of complete awareness, between the ticks of a second hand, between the beats of her heart. An infinite, eternal, instant, in which she saw not only through her eyes, but also below and beside and even above herself. She witnessed her body cartwheeling through the air, bare limbs flailing, a full five meters above the concrete at the bottom of the waterway.

She spent an unknowable time marveling at the _height_ she had managed to achieve. She examined the shocked faces of the pedestrians who had been crossing the bridge as she'd sped into the motorcycle parking lot and thence over the concrete wall and into the air.

Gregory would be so upset she could not get a photograph of some of their expressions!

She wondered if the Sekirei who was pursuing her appreciated the amazing flight of Madoka and her Cervelo bicycle. She doubted it.

Her perspective returned to her body, violently, when she smashed into the slopped concrete embankment on the far side of the empty watercourse. Her brain then realized, and truly appreciated, that no matter how it might _wish_ a moment to be eternal, no one could resist the inevitable, powerful, grasp of gravity and velocity for long.

Not even pretty, alien, bird girls.

Madoka was grateful to the fates for the immediate darkness of unconsciousness, which mercifully spared her having to experience more than the initial pain of the impact.

:::NGFOM 3.1:::

"Imouto-chan. Come on, imouto-chan, wake up. Kya, come on! Wake up, Mado!"

Madoka felt a light taping on her cheeks, as though someone were very gently slapping her face. This, along with a woman's insistent voice, brought her out of the deep, dark, oblivion that had been keeping her safe from pain.

"Ow, oh, god, ow..." Madoka whined as someone helped her sit up, one strong arm behind her shoulders, lifting, and the other hand gripping her left arm, pulling gently. She hurt. Everywhere. Especially across her shoulders and her back, upon which she had, it seemed, landed and flopped hard onto the concrete embankment of the Shibuya River. And her left leg; the muscles from her butt to her foot were complaining loudly to her.

" _Wait… imouto-chan?"_

Madoka's eyes flew open and she looked right into the sea-blue eyes of her onee-sama, Toyotama, who was trying to help her up into a sitting position.

"AIYEEE!" Madoka screamed at the top of her lungs and flailed her arms to get free from Toyotama's grip, kicking with her bleeding, bare, legs as hard as she could, trying to crab walk backwards and away from the green-haired Sekirei, all at the same time. Toyotama's grip around Madoka's shoulders and on her left arm tightened like a hard vice. Madoka pushed against the gravelly surface she had been laying on, arching her back, kicking with her feet, and desperately attempting to break free from the Sekirei who had caught her, still screaming in utmost terror.

"No, no! Please, NO, Toyotama-onee-sama, please, no, let me go, please! Do not take me away from my Ashikabi, please!" Madoka fought with everything she had, trying to get away, but Toyotama fell across her, pinning her. Madoka was weeping and screaming and begging all together, and what little sane thought that was left in her mind amongst the fear and panic caused her to realize she had no chance at all of fighting Toyotama off. The muscular Sekirei was pinning her without even trying hard and was shouting at Madoka to stop struggling.

Madoka gripped Toyotama's left forearm in both of her hands and shrieked, a last desperate gesture. Toyotama made no effort to wrench her arm free from Madoka's comparatively weak grip, instead she just continued to hold the smaller Sekirei in place, tightly.

When the radius bone in Toyotama's forearm broke in half with a crack loud enough to hear ten meters away, Toyotama seemed to decide she should keep Madoka's hands held away. The green haired Sekirei grimaced with the pain, but managed to wrestle Madoka into a hold she could not break out of and that kept Madoka's hands away from Toyotama's body.

"No, no, please, no," Madoka, now exhausted, collapsed under Toyotama's weight and started weeping, like a heartbroken child, choking sobs shaking her whole body.

"Damnit, Mado! Stop it! I'm not trying to hurt you! Why won't you listen, damnit!"

Madoka just kept crying, even though she slowly realized Toyotama's strong arms were wrapped around her protectively, having pulled her up into the other Sekirei's lap. Toyotama was gently rocking her back and forth, and the other girl's cheek was pressed against the top of Madoka's head. Toyotama kept repeating, "I'm not trying to hurt you, imouto-chan, I promise…"

:::NGFOM 3.1:::

Several minutes later Madoka managed to regain control of her breathing, no longer shaking and crying against Toyotama's very comfortable, if wet, chest, her tears having soaked the black tank top that Toyotama was wearing. _That_ was why Madoka hadn't recognized number 16 when she'd glimpsed her in pursuit; she was wearing something completely different from her usual blue and white fighting outfit. She only had on a thigh-length black tank top and knee high strapped boots, leaving her solid, muscular, thighs completely bare. The tank top had a low-cut neck, displaying Toyotama's cleavage prominently.

Madoka did not try to wriggle free; she just leaned into her onee-sama's embrace and closed her eyes, taking in the scent and feel of the girl who had been her protector and lover for so long.

It wasn't the same now, for some reason.

When Toyotama placed a finger under Madoka's chin and tilted the little blonde's face upwards so that Toyotama could kiss her imouto-chan, that wasn't the same either.

After just a moment of their lips and tongues touching, Toyotama pulled back, her eyebrows pulled down and together. She looked confused. She knew it wasn't the same too.

Madoka looked down then wrapped her arms around Toyotama's torso, pressing her cheek against Toyotama's conspicuous chest, where Madoka had wept so much already. Madoka whispered, "I am sorry. I am sorry, Toyotama-onee-sama, it… it is my fault it is not the same now."

After a moment of silence, Toyotama chuckled softly and Madoka could feel her shaking her head in disagreement. The larger girl said, "No, Mado. It's both of us. I can't kiss you without thinking of my Ashikabi and I guess you feel the same way because you're winged too, you have an Ashikabi of your own."

Madoka nodded her head, her arms still wrapped around Toyotama's waist, head pressed against her chest, looking down.

Minutes passed in silence, with Toyotama's right hand gently playing with Madoka's blonde hair then sliding down Madoka's arm.

Toyotama finally spoke again, with a confused, dreamy, tone that struck Madoka as odd. "I'm glad, Mado. Is… is he a good guy?"

Madoka nodded her head again, but she was not really thinking about Gregory. Instead, she was now thinking about the sort of man Toyotama's Ashikabi was.

Toyotama was silent. Her fingertips caressed the bare skin around Madoka's midsection, then up the blonde's spine, under the lose fitting half shirt Madoka wore for bicycling. Toyotama's fingers stroked and caressed tenderly, with all the care of a lover, along the back of Madoka's neck and down to her shoulders. Not saying a word, and not letting lose her grip where her broken left arm was wrapped around Madoka's knees.

Madoka did not understand what Toyotama was doing; neither of them had gotten any spark from the kiss, it just was not like it used to be. Why was the larger girl stroking her fingers… across Madoka's back and shoulders… along her Sekirei Crest…

The little blonde Sekirei froze as a jolt of fear penetrated her heart. She did not move at all; she did not try to get away. She could barely breathe.

With just a word, Toyotama could start speaking her Norito and terminate Madoka. It would only take a second, with her fingers touching Madoka's crest as they were.

Madoka bit her lip to keep from crying out; growing terror now gripped her mind so tightly she could not think. Like a rabbit remaining as still as possible in the small hope that the hawk would not see it, Madoka huddled in the embrace of her once-upon-a-time lover.

With her face still pressed against Toyotama's large breasts, she could clearly see that the muscular girl's nipples had hardened, rather dramatically. Madoka even caught the faint, familiar, scent of Toyotama's arousal, her excitement.

Excitement? Arousal? At the thought of terrifying Madoka. The girl who she called imouto-chan, who had depended on her and looked up to her?

Toyotama continued stroking her fingers lightly across Madoka's Sekirei Crest. When she spoke, her voice was low and faraway, husky with barely suppressed desire. "I'm glad your Ashikabi is a good guy, imouto-chan. I hope he takes good care of you. Does he? Does he take good care of you? Like I used to take care of you?"

Madoka nodded, her shoulders hunched up defensively as she sat there in Toyotama's lap, her eyes open so wide you could see the whites all the way around the blue iris, and managed to gasp out, "Yes, onee-sama, he takes good care of me."

Whatever was happening in Toyotama's head it was something that the older Sekirei did not seem to understand or perhaps was fighting. Madoka _knew_ , somehow, that every second that passed in which Toyotama's thoughts went further down this road the more danger Madoka was in.

She could feel Toyotama nodding her head. "That's good. That's how it should be, right? I'm afraid I wasn't quite so lucky, Mado-chan. My Ashikabi wasn't very happy with the kind of person I was. He prefers cruelty over compassion. He believes the weak should serve the strong. And that the weak should be broken…"

Toyotama's voice had gotten lower and lower, until the last, whispered, _"…broken…"_ was barely audible to Madoka, even with Toyotama now nuzzling the smaller girl's ear. Tears gathered in Madoka's eyes again, her heart was thumping against her ribs so hard that it hurt. Huddling, shaking, terrified, in the embrace of a person who wanted to hurt her.

Any second now and Toyotama was going to cross a line she could not step back across. Madoka could _feel_ Toyotama shivering; her incredibly powerful muscles were hardening and an aura of violence and pain surrounded her.

Madoka wished she could understand what Toyotama meant, what she was doing, what she was thinking. She needed to know, now! What was the other Sekirei going to do, _what was she thinking_?

Madoka felt a barrier, a shield, between herself and Toyotama, keeping her out. She pushed as hard as she could but number 16 was strong, and that strength seemed to include her metapsychic shields. On a bare hunch spurred from one of her late night conversations with Gregory, full of speculation and wild guesses, Madoka took her healing power and used _it_ to _push_ at that barrier. Madoka told herself she wanted to fix whatever was hurting Toyotama, saying it over and over in her own head, that she wanted to heal what was hurting Toyotama, she wanted to get inside and fix her.

And then she slipped right through the shield, like it was barely there.

:::NGFOM 3.1:::

{ _Mind_ _Redact_ }

Madoka stood in some other place, a place with a sky that was all dark, angry, clouds. It was night, the only illumination was from fires scattered about the dry, cracked, landscape. Each fire lit a scene, each scene featured Toyotama. Madoka instinctively realized that she was seeing Toyotama's mindscape, with the other girl's memories scattered about in the distance, and her thoughts were perceived as drifting voices in Madoka's ears.

One name dominated every thought: Toyotama's Ashikabi, Izumi Higa.

Higa-sama. _Higa-sama._

In the ruddy light of one fire, Madoka could see 86 Katsuragi; the other Sekirei's face was twisted in shame and pain as muscular, faceless, men raped her. Toyotama stood by, watching, and made sure Katsuragi did not fight back, because that was Higa-sama's order.

Higa-sama. That name transported Madoka to another fire, in the light of which she saw Toyotama standing confident and proud in her blue and white fighting outfit. She wore an intrigued expression on her face, and was listening to an attractive young man in a very expensive white suit. Toyotama had _just_ stepped out of the MBI van, finally free from the labs and now out in the city. Immediately, this very pretty, slender, young man had stepped up to her where she stood on the sidewalk and started speaking to her. He already knew about the Sekirei Plan, he told her that had the desire to participate in it, with the goal of winning. He wanted the strongest Sekirei available to be the core of his efforts, to help him find others to bring to their side, and to be the first among them in his consideration. Toyotama could _feel_ the power radiating from this beautiful young man, pulling her towards him. That pull was almost irresistible, so she stopped fighting it and agreed to his proposal then stepped up to him and kissed…

Another fire showed Toyotama's fists crashing into the ribs of another Sekirei, a _very_ cute girl with dark, purple tinted, hair and wearing a curious black and white dress with thick petticoats. This girl Madoka did not recognize but, by way of Toyotama thoughts, she realized this was Sekirei 101, Oriha. As Madoka lingered at the memory of Toyotama's beatdown of the prideful and formal Oriha, she saw more of what happened next.

After Izumi Higa forcibly winged the petite Oriha, using the same spit-covered finger in her mouth that he used with 86 Katsuragi, the purple-haired girl's aristocratic, finely featured face twisted into a snarl and she'd _spit_ at Higa as he had been walking away. Madoka was shocked at the gesture of defiance, doubly so considering that Oriha _was_ actually bonded to this man now. You could clearly see the pink Sekirei Crest now on her upper back, there was no mistaking it. Higa Izumi paused and ordered Toyotama to cease her renewed beating on the other Sekirei and he considered Oriha's demeanor as she was held up for his inspection in Toyotama's unbreakable grip. He ordered her transported back to the secure rooms at the top of Higa Pharmaceutical's headquarters. Madoka heard what he ordered Toyotama to do to humble the prudish and proper number 101.

Madoka's involuntary flicker of curious thought at _that_ subject delivered her to the memory of Toyotama strapping the shame-faced, completely naked, Oriha face down onto a sawhorse thing made of rough unfinished wood, so that her arms and legs hung to either side to be strapped to the legs of the thing. Oriha's bare, full, breasts scraped cruelly against the deliberately rough surface of the board under her while at the other end the board was shaped into a sharp wedge. Toyotama finished tying the now terrified Oriha's arms and legs to the limbs of the device, leaving her helpless and horribly vulnerable. Her backside was completely exposed, her legs forcibly spread apart and unmovable at one end of the device, allowing an embarrassed Madoka to see every detail of how the wedge of the wooden sawhorse was pressing up against the girl's privates. The pale skin of the other Sekirei's back was glistening with fear-sweat now, her shame and embarrassment starting to be overcome by dread of what was going to happen to her next.

Though this was the first time that Higa had ordered Toyotama to discipline a member of their small flock, number 16 knew what to do, from watching Higa's assistant, the sadistic Kakizaki, at his play, using this same device.

Toyotama was reluctant. This wasn't what Toyotama enjoyed, the green-haired amazon scowled as she took the leather scourge from the wall rack where various instruments of punishment were kept. Toyotama looked at the leather thongs which dangled from the handle of the scourge, absently noticing the leather was stained with old blood. She really wished Kakizaki had been given this task, he at least enjoyed it. Instead, Higa's assistant was observing from a comfortable chair, sipping tea and waiting for Toyotama to begin.

Toyotama looked over at Oriha's perfect, petite yet curvy, completely naked and extremely vulnerable body on display before her. She _was_ enough to make Toyotama really take a second look at the pretty little thing she'd been ordered to discipline. Toyotama felt a stir of heat in belly that that she had not felt in months.

Number 16 followed her orders.

By the time she was done, an hour later, 16 was covered in sweat from her efforts. And pretty little 101 was covered from her shoulders to the prominent swell of her pert ass and all down the backs of her shapely legs with lash marks and blood.

Kakizaki instructed the watching, somber, number 86 to take the now-no-longer-screaming number 101 and clean her up with the water hoses provided for just such tasks and then to deliver 101 to her cell to recover and sleep.

Then 16 retreated to her own quarters, where she collapsed against the door as soon as it closed and furiously fingered herself to an almost immediate climax.

After the blinding pleasure that wracked her body like nothing she had ever experienced before, Toyotama fell onto her side, on the floor, her pants around her ankles, and she wept in shame, her mind lost in a maze of contradictions. A ghostly image of Izumi Higa stood next to her with an expression of barely satisfied acknowledgement, not caring as Toyotama lay on the floor, shuddering and snarling in fear, shame, and confusion, her mind close to breaking.

Madoka tried to turn away, desperately. But everywhere she looked she saw the beautiful bishōnen face of Izumi Higa, expressionless when Toyotama performed some act of brutality or sadism. Scowling in disapproval anytime number 16 did anything kind, anytime she even entertained a wholesome thought. He was in the background of every memory; even the ones further away like the memories of Toyotama in the MBI Sekirei Labs, the memories of Madoka and Toyotama together. Higa was appearing, fading slowly into all of them. Every desire that appeared and disappeared in Toyotama's mind now had Izumi Higa's face behind it.

Woven through _all_ of this horror and shame was Toyotama's fundamental understanding that of all the Sekirei enslaved, now and tomorrow and for who knew how many years to come, enslaved to the devil Izumi Higa, _she_ was the only one who had volunteered. He had not even had to lie to convince her. _She_ was the one who deserved to be enslaved, not the others. Toyotama's self-loathing, her desperate need for her Ashikabi's approval, and her complete mistrust of her own judgment, was twisting her, slowly but surely, into something dangerous. Something broken.

Madoka saw that in all the time number 16 had been bonded to Higa Izumi she had only had the one kiss, that one that Toyotama herself initiated, the kiss that bonded her to him. He rarely even spoke to his Sekirei, usually sending his directions via Kakizaki, though he occasionally deigned to speak to Toyotama to give her orders. Notably, he would give orders to number 16 in person when he wanted her to do something particularly vile.

Toyotama was being torn apart by her _guesses_ of what her Ashikabi wanted. Madoka felt a great deal of sympathy and pity for her one-time friend and lover, to be so unlucky as to have an uncaring and cold Ashikabi, who barely tolerated the presence of his Sekirei, and who gave them no affection or love or even any real clues as to how they might win his bare approval.

Madoka sensed her time was running out. She searched with every bit of Farsense she had, looking for the here and the now in Toyotama's perceptions.

Madoka found herself standing on a rooftop somewhere in Tokyo, looking down at herself, half sitting and half laying, in Toyotama's lap. Madoka noticed that she looked much like what she looked like through Gregory's eyes. Incredibly desirable, beautiful, _delicious_. Toyotama was weeping and screaming wordlessly, trying to pull her own hand away from the Sekirei Crest of the motionless blonde girl, her imouto.

The ghostly image of Izumi Higa stood beside her, watching. He did not say a word. He did not need to.

Madoka knelt next to the struggling Toyotama, shouting at the other Sekirei, "He did not tell you to find and terminate Winged Sekirei today! You were only here…" Madoka looked around, desperately, before she saw the memory she needed. "You were only here in the West to try to catch unwinged 48 Kujika! That is all! You do not know he would want you to terminate me, you do not have to do it, Toyotama, you do not have to do it! Do not do it, Toyotama!" This was not working. She could _feel_ the _lust_ boiling in Toyotama's body and her mind, and the only avenue her Ashikabi approved for release was _right there_ , in the delicious body of her imouto, the body she knew so well.

Madoka knew she was losing this battle, fast. Trying to command Toyotama to stop was not doing it. She turned and desperately pushed at the ghost image of Higa, where he stood next to Toyotama, on the rooftop. "Go away! Leave her be and go away!" Her hands went right through him, unable to find any purchase on the beautiful white-suited man. Madoka pulled at the only Sekirei power she had, as deeply as she could, and then _pushed_ at Higa's image as she had pushed at Toyotama's mind shield. The cruel Ashikabi moved! He did not stumble or react to the contact with Madoka's power, but his image moved away, visibly. Madoka pushed as hard as she could, willing Izumi Higa's image away, far away from this place.

{End Mind Redact}

:::NGFOM 3.1:::

Madoka opened her physical eyes as she was suddenly pushed out of Toyotama's grasp and away from the other Sekirei. Toyotama jumped to her feet and backed away from Madoka, holding onto her broken left forearm with her right hand. Madoka, sprawled out on her back, could now see they were, indeed, on the rooftop of one of the buildings that backed up to the Shibuya River, near where she and her bicycle had so dramatically crashed. Toyotama must have grabbed her unconscious body and leapt up here to get away from the eyes of the civilians.

Madoka stood, shakily, and eyed Toyotama warily. Number 16 gasped for breath, holding her left forearm against her body, her eyes were wild with confusion and suppressed desire. After several long moments she seemed to find some control; her breathing settled, and she exhaled a deep, shuddering, sigh.

The green-haired Sekirei then looked away, out at the city, and muttered, "I'm sorry, Mado. I… don't know what came over me."

Madoka realized that Toyotama had no awareness of what had happened in her own mindscape and that only seconds had passed by "outside". Toyotama was not even aware that Madoka had been in her mind, unaware Madoka had seen her secrets and witnessed her deepest shame. The small blonde almost collapsed in relief once she understood this. She could not imagine Toyotama leaving her alive if she knew… if she had any idea…

"That was a new trick, how you broke my arm. And what was that you were driving, you were really hauling ass, Mado."

Madoka blinked, confused at the attempted friendly tone of voice from number 16. She tried to gather her scattered wits as she replied, "Yes. I am sorry about your arm. I have not ever done that before, it was… well, like the opposite of healing. I do not think it is much help in a fight, it is too slow."

Toyotama nodded agreement, still looking at the buildings across the river.

"And, that was a bicycle," Madoka said. "Or, it was. I probably wrecked it when I went into the river."

Toyotama laughed, a strained sort of sound, completely unlike the loud, brave, laughter of Madoka's onee-sama, and she looked down over the lip of the roof. "I don't know. It's still down there. Come here, I'll jump you back down to where it is."

Toyotama held out an arm, which Madoka looked at suspiciously. Number 16 just waited. Madoka decided that trying to climb down from eight stories up on an unknown building was too risky. If Toyotama still meant her any harm, well, there was not anything Madoka could do about it anyway.

So she took the offered arm and Toyotama jumped the two of them down, next to the bicycle.

Once on the ground Madoka quickly moved away from Toyotama, to check over her bike, which was in surprisingly good condition. There were some scratches but otherwise no obvious damage. She was astonished; she thought it would be smashed to pieces considering how hard she herself had hit the concrete. She had bruises and scratches all along her back and shoulders, and she was still bleeding from the torn skin on her legs. Yet, here was her bike, barely damaged at all.

"Mado."

The blonde girl turned and faced her one-time lover, friend, big sister. Madoka knew, beyond any doubt, that the Toyotama she had known was almost completely gone now, burned away by the expectations of the evil man who was her Master.

"Mado… I'll try to get sent on jobs to the other parts of the city, not the west. But… if you do happen to see me again, please, do run as fast as you can and don't trust that I'll… be the same person. Even now, I'm so tempted to… god, I want to _hurt you, so much_ …" Toyotama's eyes filled with tears and the proud warrior Sekirei covered her mouth with both her hands, horrified.

Madoka answered, her voice as calm and soothing as she could make it. "I understand, truly, Toyotama-san. Thank you, for everything. I truly mean that. Thank you." Madoka bowed deeply, hoping Toyotama would have the strength to be able to just… leave, to just let Madoka go.

" _Please, just let me go, Toyotama, please. Just let me go."_

The tall girl nodded her head, her green hair swaying around. "Good. Okay. That's that then. Goodbye, Mado."

"Arigatō gozaimasu, Toyotama-san. Sayōnara."

With the finality of that farewell from Madoka, Toyotama leapt up and out of sight without another word.

Madoka stood from her deep bow and let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. Her hands were shaking so badly that she could not imagine driving the bicycle, so she pushed it along the concrete river way, until she saw what she thought was the back door of the safe house. Climbing up the steep embankment, pulling the Cervelo along, very glad of its mere 6kg weight, she reached the door she thought was the back door to the safe house and punched in the security code into the keypad beside it. She was _very_ happy to see the door open.

She then staggered into the safe house, the door closing and locking behind her.

:::NGFOM 3.1:::  
:::NGFOM 3.1:::

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 _ **Sekirei**_ _ **-**_

 _ **Group 11**_

The following includes all Sekirei who were ever part of Group 11 in the MBI Sekirei Labs to the best of 37 Madoka's memory. Most were only a part of the Group for a short period, some joined as part of a merging of another Group into Group 11, others as individuals or pairs being reassigned, yet others were assigned to Group 11 after years of being isolated from all other Sekirei. Only five were a part of Group 11 from Madoka's earliest memories until she herself was removed just before the First Phase of the Sekirei Plan began but there were usually at least a dozen Sekirei in the Group. Enough so that it was possible to not have close relationships with every person and for rivalries and factions to develop, likely by MBI's design.

10 Uzume

14 Chiyo

15 Himeko

16 Toyotama – "Permanent" member

18 Ichiya – "Permanent" member

19 Ikki

24 Asuka

25 Fuji

37 Madoka – "Permanent" member

40 Shi

44 Yosuga – "Permanent" member

52 Akio

54 Kuruse

57 Yahan

67 Riko

72 Natsu

74 Narashino

79 Kamiko

84 Yashima – "Permanent" member

86 Katsuragi

91 Ren

95 Kuno

104 Haihane

105 Benitsubasa

106 Shijime

Additionally, the following Sekirei were known to Madoka but were not a part of Group 11:

02 Matsu

03 Kazehana

04 Karasuba

05 Mutsu

07 Akitsu

08 Yume

22 Kochou

 ** _Sekirei Plasticity_**

Over the last several weeks of observing Madoka's behavior, I believe I've witnessed a phenomenon concerning the nature of the Sekirei as they relate to their Ashikabi. It's tentative and until we can interview more Sekirei and hopefully get accurate answers from them on this subject I'll not know if I'm on the right track.

The observed phenomenon in question is the seeming _plasticity_ of the Sekirei.

I suspect that the Sekirei adapt themselves to their Ashikabi to a degree far greater than any Terran Human could, even if they wished to. Whatever behavior, attitude, demeanor, morality, ambition, or desires they perceive their Ashikabi prefers in a mate, the bonded Sekirei will change to match. The key is, I believe, the "perceive" portion of the phenomenon. Through what means do these highly metapsychic people perceive the preferences of their Ashikabi? Quite likely through not only the Ashikabi's verbal statements but also via the deep mental connection the Ashikabi and Sekirei share. This would, one assumes, allow the Sekirei to become what the Ashikabi really wants in a mate, as opposed to what he says he wants.

How many men would say they want a partner who is an equal and who is independent minded and strong willed, because that's what is expected by society for them to want, when in the secret places in their minds what they'd really prefer is a mindlessly devoted sex-slave? If that Ashikabi's Sekirei became more strong willed and independent over time, insisting on equal treatment and being consulted in all decisions then it is quite likely there would be far more strife in their relationship than if she had perceived what her Ashikabi _really_ wanted in a mate and over time became more mindlessly devoted to him.

The potential for abuse of these sentient beings is so profound that it boggles the mind. How many Ashikabi have the strength of mind and will to refuse to send even subconscious messages about how they would prefer their Sekirei behave? How many would gladly accept what would seem to be the perfect adolescent fantasy-mate, dropped into their laps, without concern for the Sekirei herself?

Is it even possible for an Ashikabi to _not_ change his Sekirei to suit his own selfish desires?

The primary effect I have noticed so far with my own Sekirei, 37 Madoka, is a distinct change in her attitudes towards sex and physical affection, as well as an increased willingness to be seen in various states of undress around me. As this was notably not her behavior a month ago I must assume her attitudes and possibly even her desires are being changed by the plastic nature of the Sekirei themselves, via her perception of what I would prefer her to be.

A great deal more observation needs to be done on this subject before we can even begin to develop a hypothesis to explain the observed phenomenon, and even to tell if the observed phenomenon is being correctly defined.

* * *

 _ **Terminology**_

 ** _Metapsychic Functions_**

 **Redaction** (New Information, some data added at a much later date than the original notes) – Madoka described her efforts to "reach" into the mind of 16 Toyotama as being blocked by a shield, the same shield Madoka describes as detectable in all the Sekirei when using Farspeech to "get in" to the target's awareness. When Madoka attempted to get through, via the usual method of the Farsense metafunction, she was totally stymied. Normally, if she was desiring to simply Farspeak the shielded person, she would just "shout" at the target from outside their shields until they opened their shield enough to allow for basic communication. However, when she used her "healing" ability, the Redaction metafunction, she says she was able to "slide right through" the shield. It was still there, it wasn't broken or shattered, but she passed right through.

She reported that she gathered her Redaction power and told herself she needed to get through the shield so she could heal what was causing 16 Toyotama so much pain.

It would seem that, as I earlier speculated, the "healing" metafunction is indeed the same for intrusive mind work as well as healing physical injury. And the Redact metafunction has the ability to bypass the mental shields all operant metapsychics seem to have. Likely this is so they can actually heal those who have damaged minds, as the mentally damaged would very likely resist greatly any attempt by an outsider to access their minds.

Mind shields seem to be designed to keep general Farsense/Farspeech practitioners from snooping information out the Operant wants to keep private. They may also be helpful for resisting the commands of an Operant Coercer. However, Redaction, as the "healing" metafunction, seems to have special status when it comes to bypassing shields.

Obviously, more testing needs to be done, but we can say with a high degree of certainty that the healing injury and the reading/modifying the mind metafunction is, indeed, the same ability.

* * *

Started Oct 19, 2014  
Completed Oct 23, 2014  
Final Edits May 11, 2015  
Posted May 22, 2015  
Grammar and technical writing edits Nov 26, 2015


	9. Bk3 - Ch2 Watch That Next Step

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 3.2 – Ch9 Watch That Next Step (it's a doozy!)

 _Author's Note: Apologies in advance for anyone reacting negatively to the song lyrics near the end of this chapter. "Song fics" are never as awesome to the reader as to the author but in this case a few pointed song lyrics were what came to the character's minds. It won't be a common occurrence in this story, so the author begs the readers indulgence this one time._

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Saturday, January 25, 2020  
Tokyo Metro High School, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

"Gregory-sensei? Gregory-sensei?"

Gregory O'Donnell looked up from the picture on his phone at which he had been staring. He blinked, realizing he was not sure how long he had been looking at the short looped animated photo of his Sekirei, Sanjunana Madoka. It was one of his favorites, so far, featuring her looking up at the camera through her thick eyelashes and smiling her Mona Lisa smile, the one that said "I know something that you do not…"

He tried to focus his attention on the person who had politely been trying to get his attention. One of his adult students, yes, this was Saturday English as a Second Language Class. Ah, several of the students were looking at him; he believed it was Koruba-san, the thirty-something fellow in the second row, who had softly called out.

"My apologies, Koruba-san. I believe my mind wandered off on its own and got lost; thank you for helping it find its way back." Gregory smiled apologetically to the class and stood up from his chair. "What was your question?"

Gregory answered several questions concerning the study project the class was working on. He realized he had not been focusing on his work the way he usually did. It was more noticeable with the ESL class, but he suspected his attention was not on his work during the weekdays either. Not for the first time since the start of the spring semester, three weeks ago, Gregory told himself that he really needed to clear his head and focus during school hours on school, instead of letting his attention wander to his lovely Sekirei.

A half-hour before noon Gregory felt the secondary phone that he now carried in his suit jacket vibrate silently with a notification that a text message had arrived. He knew the message must be from Madoka as she was the only person who had the number for the pre-paid semi-disposable phone.

They had purchased several of these pre-paid phones from a random convenience store for ¥10,000 each and they came with a hundred hours of phone service as well as several hundred gigabytes of data service. Since the phone service and the data traffic was ID'd as "LGke850imode-123456789" they were about as anonymous and "secure" as a smartphone could be. As long as neither his nor Madoka's "safe" phones ever communicated directly to their older, compromised, phones MBI (and, just as important, any hostile Ashikabi who had compromised MBI's networks, like Izumi Higa) should be unable to intercept their communications.

At least, that was his hope. There was still a huge number of details he'd not considered yet when it came to security and the new place he and Madoka were spending time at, the rental loft.

If Madoka was messaging his secondary phone then she was likely either at the loft or somewhere along the route to it. Gregory inwardly cursed the need to keep the new phone completely separated from his other electronics, especially accessories like the smart-watch he wore on his left wrist, which was a secondary display for all of the functions of his primary, compromised, phone.

Not connecting the smart-watch or the wireless jaw-mic or earbud to the safe phone meant he had to pull the phone out of his pocket, turn on the screen, and then check his text messages.

Barbaric.

" _G, was ambushed by 16 en route to safe house. Am ok no serious injury, at s.h. now plz come soon"_

Gregory felt his heart thump in his chest so hard it hurt. He checked the time, still thirty minutes until class got out. Gritting his teeth, he tapped out a quick acknowledgement to Madoka then turned the screen off and put the phone back in his jacket.

" _She said she was okay. Stop worrying, Greg. She said she was okay. Take a deep breath. Let it out… take another… okay… good…"_

No matter what he tried, Gregory's emotions kept getting the best of him. He had to force himself to take slow, deep, breaths to settle his heart rate.

It was all he could do to not grab his stuff and run out the door and to hell with the class and his job.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

It took ten minutes to drive from school to the O'Donnell's apartment and park in the basement parking spot he rented for his Jeep.

Five minutes in the apartment to change into jeans, a white wool sweater, and tennis shoes, grab the small duffel bag he kept just inside his bedroom door packed for this very purpose. He dropped off his compromised phone and his smart-watch into the basket on the breakfast bar that already contained Madoka's compromised phone. With both phones here, MBI's GPS tracking would report they spent the weekend at the apartment. Mental note to not use the MBI Card to purchase anything until they recovered their compromised phones, lest MBI figure out they weren't carrying their phones everywhere they went.

Walking from the apartment to the extremely busy Shinjuku train station, six minutes. Navigating the byzantine mysteries of Shinjuku station to get to the Yamanote Line ticket kiosk? Ten more minutes. And that's with Gregory having practiced it several times over the last week. Japanese train stations were a cliché of crowds and confusing signs and for good reason, and Shinjuku was infamous even for Tokyo. It was, after all, the busiest train station in the entire world.

Step into a men's bathroom stall near the southbound Yamanote Line platform; take the black hoodie and a new surgical mask from his duffel. Swap the black hoodie for the white sweater he had been wearing. Pull the surgical mask elastics over his head and settle the white cotton mask over his lower face, then pull the hoodie up over his head. No sunglasses or baseball cap; looking like a terrorist was worse than being easily identifiable.

Zip up the duffel with the white sweater now inside, put his arms through the duffel's straps so it wore like a knapsack on his back instead of how he had been carrying it in his hands, and then step back out with the hoodie up over his head. Four minutes.

No one casually looking for the white-sweater-wearing Anglo with the bag in hand would see that person leaving the bathroom. Gregory did not fool himself into thinking he was practicing sophisticated spy-craft, but this was an easy change to make so he had made it part of the routine.

Gregory was glad it was the middle of winter. During the summer, wearing a hoodie would be a little suspicious, as well as downright uncomfortable.

Waiting for the next train was quick, there was one leaving the station every four minutes. Gregory had to hand it to the Japanese; their mass transit was a thing of beauty.

On the southbound Yamanote Line, four stops from Shinjuku station to the smaller Ebisu station near the safe house, nine minutes. During the wait he texted to Madoka's safe phone to let her know he was en route. The temporary safe-phones were not connected to map and GPS location accounts so she could not see where he was and vice versa. Something to look into addressing, later. With a hundred other security details now cropping up in his imagination.

Walk out of Ebisu station, trek the 400 meters from the station, through narrow back alleys and along roadways, across the narrow one-lane bridge that crossed the "Shibuya River" (Gregory still snickered at the two meter wide glorified ditch being called a river) then left and he was at the back door of the safe house. Six minutes.

It was almost 1pm when Gregory shut the door behind him, making sure the automatic lock caught.

"Madoka! Mado-chan!"

He passed Madoka's bicycle where it leaned against the wall and took the stairs to the left two at a time, up to the big loft. Madoka met him at the top of the stairs and almost tackled him. She wasted no time in reaching up to pull the surgical mask down off his face, then wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down into a desperate kiss.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory held his Sekirei tightly to his chest. The light of her wings had already faded, and he was leaning against the wall at the top of the stairs, glad she had not knocked him over and sent the two of them tumbling down the stairs in a heap. Right now, all he wanted was to hold her and feel her against him so he knew she was okay.

Madoka had unzipped his hoodie and her arms were around his waist under it. She was pulling on his shirt to untuck it, one hand already under the shirt and her palm pressed against his lower back. She was nuzzling his neck insistently as well, and there was a _lot_ more wiggling sexy body pressed up against him than he had expected.

"Hey, Mado-chan, I missed you too." Gregory slid down the wall, ending up sitting on the floor at the top of the stairs, with an increasingly agitated girl in his lap. "Mado, hey, come on, tell me what happened."

His shirt was completely untucked now, both of Madoka's arms were around his bare midsection, and her fingers were raking up and down the bare skin on his back. And she wasn't just nuzzling his neck, now she was kissing and biting, and small moans were caressing his ear delightfully.

He tried again, "Madoka, hey, it's okay, you're safe. Calm down and tell me what happened, okay?" He tried to gently push her back and away, with his hands on her shoulders but she was not listening and not letting him gently push her anywhere.

Gregory tried to think but it was difficult. Just the soft panting in his ear was driving him a bit crazy, then Madoka's fingernails raked from his shoulder blades to below his ribs on his back and that did it.

"Madoka, stop! Please!" Gregory gripped her upper arms and forced her back and away from him. "Tell me what's the matter!"

"No!" Tears of frustration started gathering in her eyes, and then she pushed both of his arms aside, breaking his grip on her arms and tried to snuggle back up against his torso. He had forgotten how strong she was when she put effort into something.

A few moments of struggling later and he had managed to turn her around in his lap so her back was against his chest and his arms were around her chest, holding her arms in place. "Madoka, please, stop; tell me what's the matter. What happened?"

With a last gesture of frustration, throwing her head back and hitting him in the collarbone with the back of her skull, his Sekirei cried, "No! No talking! Just… Damnit, why can't we just have sex, Gregory-kun? Enough talking!"

Gregory was stunned into silence by that and Madoka stopped fighting him, her head fell forward and she started to cry. He tried to squeeze her shoulder reassuringly but she slapped his hand away and rolled out of his lap to sit on the floor a few feet away, not looking at him.

He noticed she was not wearing much. A thin shirt that was quite see-through. A very brief pair of white and blue striped cotton panties (was there a store that sold nothing but blue-and-white-striped pantsu? If so, he really should buy stock). Between that, and the way her wiggling body felt against him, and her rather shocking language, Gregory was so erect that it hurt.

After a quick "adjustment" and resettling himself against the wall so he was sitting more comfortably, Gregory waited and tried to think of what he should say. Madoka had certainly been doing a lot of flirting with him over the last few weeks, but he convinced himself that it was just her teasing him because she enjoyed the way he got flustered or how he would occasionally blush. Girls in his senior English classes did the same, occasionally; it didn't mean anything. It never actually meant anything.

A person could not help what they thought of. All they could help was what they _did_ about it. Gregory wasn't blind nor was he a eunuch and in his line of work he had to think about this subject and figure out how he would deal with occasional pretty, nubile, temptation who liked to flirt with their English teacher.

 _Of course_ he noticed when one of his sexier students would lean over to talk to him at his desk and "accidentally" display a nice view of cleavage. _Of course_ he noticed those times when a school uniform skirt was pulled up just over the girls knees under her desk and her legs were apart so as to give the teacher sitting at the front of the class a clear view of her panties. In fact, _two_ girls in this year's classes had been teasing him just like that, all year. Sure, Gregory _noticed_ , but he did not _do_ anything about it.

He was honest enough with himself to admit he also did not take any steps to make them stop, either.

But while you can't help what you think, but you damn well _can_ be responsible for what you _do._

"Mado? I'm… I'm sorry." Gregory was not new at this; this was not his first rodeo. The first rule of male and female relationships? If you are the man, you are the one who is sorry.

"No, you are not."

Gregory blinked at the muffled, angry, words from his Sekirei, who was now sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them tightly, facing away from him. He did not think he had ever heard Madoka flat out call him a liar. Gregory bit down hard on the first response that almost made it past his lips and forced himself to think about what she said and how he felt.

Was he sorry? Yes, he was sorry she was upset. He was sorry someone who was once very close to her had ambushed her and apparently scared the daylights out of her. He was sorry for many things, really. Parts of him were really really sorry he had pushed her away just now. Those same parts could not help but notice how little she was wearing and how very very good she looked from behind.

Sure, Madoka was incredibly beautiful, and not only that she was _sexy_. Sexy was not just how someone looks. Looks was part of it, sure, but there was far more to sex appeal than symmetrical bone structure and how clear someones skin was or the ratio of breast to waist to hip. And whatever that "something" was, Madoka had it in _spades_. Even her forty-year-old Ashikabi was constantly in a state of "awareness" around her; he could not _help_ it.

He ignored that as best he could. Sure, if he were the twenty-year-old Ashikabi she _should_ have had, either he would be unconscious from an anime nosebleed or he would have already taken her to bed.

But he wasn't that guy. No, he was the guy who noticed she was shivering because she was cold. So Gregory pulled his hoodie off then scooted closer to Madoka to wrap it around her shoulders.

Once he had the warm garment around her, she turned and leaned her shoulder against his chest. He took that as permission to gently wrap his arms around her, holding the hoodie closed around her body. He waited, figuring the next move was hers at this point. Anything he could say would just be more talking, which apparently was a problem. There was obviously a lot they needed to talk about and he could feel the pressure building, trying to force him to talk, to try to "fix" the problem. But he knew that was exactly the wrong thing to do. The right thing to do was wait. Wait for Madoka to share with him what was on her mind, then listen to her, and then, _maybe_ , try to fix whatever was wrong.

Gregory was embarrassed at how many years it took him to learn that simple, basic, rule about relationships with women. Wait. Be patient. Let them talk when they will, not when you want them to.

Gregory also thought about the dichotomy of the two versions of Madoka he knew. The beautiful and, well, flat-out smoking _hot_ , version who showed off her 36DD breasts regularly and wiggled her fantastic ass when she knew he was looking.

Then there was the scared, young, terribly young, lost, confused, girl who had no experience in the world and who looked to him to protect her and help her survive this insane Sekirei Plan.

The one who apparently now said things like "can't we just have sex?" and the other one who was shivering in his much-too-large-for-her hoodie while trying to stop crying.

Gregory rested his cheek against the top of Madoka's head, his own eyes burning with unshed tears, suddenly. It _wasn't fair_ to her, not at all. She deserved to have an Ashikabi who saw her as an equal instead of like… a daughter or a student. Someone who saw her as a woman, instead of seeing her all too often as a girl.

Not for the first time, Gregory _was_ very sorry she had ended up with a guy like him.

"You are feeling sorry for yourself again, Gregory-kun. Stop it."

"No, I'm not."

She thumped the side of her head into his chest. "Your Sekirei is a mind-reader, Gregory-kun. You should stop trying to lie to her."

That brought him up short. Was she able to read his mind? They had talked about her maybe being able to see into what people were thinking as an element of her healing ability but she had never told him she could do it.

"Yes, I can do it. I found out today how and it is really rather easy now that I know. It's easier than healing that cut on your hand the night I told you about my secrets. Though it is a harder to see what you are thinking than it was Toyotama-san, even if you hardly have any mind shield at all. I think it is because you are my Ashikabi and I suspect you do not really want me reading your thoughts."

"That's not very fair, since I can't read your thoughts."

She shrugged. "It happens kind of automatically now, especially if I am touching you and you are thinking about something very loudly, like how you are sorry I am stuck with such a worthless, old, Ashikabi."

Gregory didn't think she sounded like she was going to try avoiding peeking in his head. He also thought about her description of his self-pity for a moment, while waiting for the embarrassment that she knew how he felt to dim. "I don't think I'm worthless."

She snorted in reply to that. He didn't think he'd ever heard her snort, either. Whatever happened today really did a number on his little Sekirei, that's for sure.

He felt her take a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. Madoka then said, "Not in everything, but in too much you think you are worthless. I do not think you are worthless. And that should count for more to you."

A sardonic chuckle was his initial response to that. "Well, Mado-chan, from the last five minutes it seems you find I am worthless for some things."

She shrugged, and then fell still against his chest. He noticed the hoodie left her legs bare, and they were still pulled up with her arms around them. Her skin was creamy but not sickly-pale; there was a hint of "California sun" in her skin tone. The cool air of the loft made the fine, very light blonde, fuzzy hairs on her thighs visible in the sunshine and for some reason Gregory found that very attractive. Looking at the swell of her thigh muscles and her calves where they were pressed together and how clean limbed she was, how perfect her skin was, he realized he was rock hard, again.

At least she wasn't moving, so she probably didn't notice, thank god.

"I noticed, Gregory-kun."

He closed his eyes. Goddamnit.

"Why are we on the floor instead of on the bed, Gregory-kun?"

"Because the bed is too dangerous, Mado-chan, and this is where we landed, anyway."

Her soft, clear, voice caressed his ears. "It is not dangerous. It is just where I want to be, with my Ashikabi. I want to feel your skin against mine and to feel you inside of me, Gregory-kun. You said I was to think through the things we learned were right and wrong and this is one of the things I have thought through. A lot. And I have decided that I do not care if it is supposed to be bad that a girl says she wants sex with her man. It is a stupid rule and I do not want to follow it anymore. Even if Mishi-chan or anyone else thinks I am a slut and a bad person. I do not care." Her voice was now steady and determined, even if she was speaking in a soft tone. A soft tone that he wondered what would sound like whispering or moaning in his ear.

Madoka shifted in his lap a bit, relaxing her arms from around her legs, allowing the outside leg to fall outward and the knee lower to the floor, the foot still tucked up next to the other foot. Maybe it was more comfortable for her but all Gregory could think for long seconds was that her legs were spread at a 90-degree angle and that all she was wearing was a tiny pair of blue-and-white-striped cotton panties.

"That is because I wanted you to think of my legs spread apart, Gregory-kun."

"Mado-chan, that's really, really, not fair."

Madoka's head was still resting against his chest as she sat sideways in his lap on the floor. He felt her shrug before saying, "I do not care, Gregory-kun. 'Fair' is going to result in me dying a virgin, never knowing the feel of my Ashikabi against me and inside me. So I really do not care anymore about 'fair'."

Her voice was low but insistent. Gregory was shocked Madoka had found the confidence to say such things, as it was almost unheard of for Japanese girls to speak so plainly about matters of sex. Even the language made it difficult; it was as conservative as the society was.

"Is that true?" Madoka speaking English sounded odd to his ears after all these weeks of the two of them speaking only Japanese; since Karen and Mishi were gone there had been no reason to keep to the English in the apartment rule. "Is the problem then that I was speaking Japanese, Greg?" She turned a bit so her back was more against his chest, keeping the right leg pulled up and leaning a bit outwards, and straightening her left leg out so it was stretched out and flat on the floor. Even knowing what she was doing Gregory couldn't help but feel his breath hitch at just the thought of her obviously spread legs.

"So if I said it in English it would help? If I asked you to fuck me, if I asked you to let me suck your cock, if I told you I was soaking wet through my panties from just sitting here in your arms with the wonderful scent of you in this hoodie driving me wild?" The way she spoke it sounded like she was trying out the words, tasting the way they rolled off her tongue and over her lips.

"Come on, Mado-chan." he answered in Japanese, stubbornly, his voice a low whisper. "Please don't do this to me."

"It is true, Greg. My panties are completely soaked through. It is almost embarrassing. But I am telling myself to not worry about it. Worrying about being embarrassed is stupid, like you told me; it is something that is not helping so I am not going to do it anymore."

Gregory almost whimpered. English sure was more… direct.

She leaned her head back against his shoulder, where she had bruised his collarbone earlier. Her thick, blonde, hair tickled his nose but he barely noticed, just like he only just noticed the soreness of the bruise she was leaning against. He realized he could just barely make out the scent of her arousal, the delightful sharp scent mixing with the pleasant way she always smelled when he held her close when they practiced kissing.

He wanted to taste her so badly that his hand almost started moving from around her waist, of its own volition, towards her cotton-covered… what he should not be even thinking about. He closed both hands tightly against the opposite forearm to keep them from wandering.

"English is so delightful, Greg. You are right; Japanese _is_ very conservative. I never realized how speaking Japanese made it very difficult to express how I felt. And, Greg, I think I like the word 'pussy' for my wet, cotton-covered, what-you-think-you-should-not-be-thinking-about. So you can call it that."

Gregory's eyes were still shut and now his jaw was clenched. _"Oh, for fuck's sake! "_

His concentration on his inward dialogue was broken by feeling his Sekirei move about in his lap as though she were trying to reach something, then a moment later her hand on the back of his neck. She had reached her right arm up and back and then touched the back of his neck with just her thumb. Then she trailed her thumbnail lightly around his neck to his jawline then up to his cheek, and then rubbed her index finger and middle finger across his lower lip then his upper lip. Both fingers were slick with her juices; he could smell the delicious and subtle scent of her arousal and when she pushed both fingers between his lips, he could taste her. He was so shocked by what she was doing that his mind went completely blank.

It was the most delicious taste and scent he had ever experienced. His brain refused to even _try_ to think about anything other than paying complete attention to every exacting detail of what his nose and his tongue were sensing. He could not _keep_ himself from sucking on her fingers, to get every trace of her wetness off the digits and onto his tongue.

The fire that her taste and scent lit within him roared into a bonfire. Gregory's arms shook with the effort of keeping still.

"That is what you wanted, right?" Madoka whispered, as she moved her fingers back to his cheek.

Gregory answered, again, in Japanese, his voice now hoarse and pleading. "Please, Mado-chan. Please don't do this to me."

She lowered her hand back to her leg and was silent for a moment before answering, "Tell me why, Greg. Why should I die a virgin, why should I not enjoy the feel of your cock pounding my pussy, your mouth sucking on my clit, the taste of your cum in my mouth? I want those things! Do you not understand? I want them!"

Gregory almost whimpered, again. Damn but talking like that was just unfair! After a moment, he answered, "Because if we cross that line it will change everything. There's no going back, no changing our minds."

She answered as soon as he stopped talking, "I will not change my mind and I will not want to go back. You are my Ashikabi, forever and ever."

Gregory grimaced, and then extracted himself from sitting on the hard floor with Madoka in his lap. After he stood, he helped her to her feet then led her over to the kitchen. He opened the 'fridge and pulled out a can of diet Coke for himself and asked her, "Would you like anything to drink?"

"A can of tea, thanks." She was still speaking English in spite of his sticking to Japanese.

" _So that's how it's going to be, eh?"_

He grabbed a can of her favorite Pokka green tea and then shut the 'fridge before turning around and asking, "Can we sit on the couch to talk, Mado-chan?"

"If you will speak English to me, yes."

"Fine, fine, okay, you win, English it is."

Gregory settled onto the couch, a long, green, leather covered, chaise-style affair which was intended to seat two who leaned back on the arms and faced each other. Sitting on it as a traditional couch was not very comfortable, as the back of the thing was low and curved with the top of the back carved wood.

Madoka, still wearing nothing but panties and his hoodie, sat between his legs with her back to him like she had been on the floor. She apparently was not giving an inch in this thing.

"Was it that bad, what happened this morning, Mado?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

"Yes, but not right now. If I do you will go get your notebook and start questioning me and then I will not get to have sex with you."

Gregory sighed in response to that. The girl really was focused on that one thing. He had to admit he felt a lot of respect for her having the courage to speak frankly about it, in spite of her upbringing. If she were still making hints and just teasing him, he would not be taking her seriously. But if she was serious enough about what she wanted that she was willing to step outside of her comfort zone and tell him what she wanted directly, he couldn't help but respond to that. He admitted to himself that a female wanting sex enough to actually say they want sex was… well, it was incredibly attractive.

But damnit, she was so young! In five years she wouldn't be the same person she was today, and in ten years she wouldn't even recognize the things she thought and believed and wanted today.

And while she might be able to go on with her life, ten years from now, asking herself what the hell she was thinking sleeping with that old schoolteacher, it would wreck him. Any commitment or decisions he made today at forty would be completely understandable to a fifty-year-old Gregory O'Donnell. People just didn't change that much once they were past thirty.

Not like the seismic, foundational, changes they went through from fifteen to twenty-five.

Gregory had _seen_ it, a hundred times in his life. Especially with young women, that point somewhere between twenty and twenty-five where they woke up to the fact that this was really the rest of their life. That the guy they'd been wasting their time on for the last several years was really not the sort of guy they wanted. The marriage they'd had for the last several years not the kind of marriage they wanted. Call it growing up or maturing or an early mid-life crisis, he didn't know what it should be called but he'd seen it time and time again. And he _knew_ Madoka, or any of the Sekirei for that matter, had not gone through that part of maturing. She simply wasn't old enough, no matter how old she actually was.

Which was another subject he tried very hard to not think about. Because he was almost certain Madoka's actual calendar age was barely in the double digits.

"Mado…"

"No, Greg," she cut him off, "I am not going to change my mind in five years and decide I need a different man or a different lifestyle or a different anything. You keep forgetting I am Sekirei and you are my Ashikabi. You think I am going to behave like any human woman might, and that just is not so."

Damnit it was frustrating when she rebutted his argument before he could even verbalize it! "Mado, you may be Sekirei but you are also human. No, hold on, let me speak. I know you have things about you that aren't common human traits. You've proven that beyond any doubt. But there is still no evidence you are from another star system, born of life that spawned on a world light years away with no common ancestor to any life on Earth. I told you what the odds were involving parallel evolution, not to mention the odds of two intelligent life forms evolving close enough in time and space in the vastness of the universe, close enough to meet each other. It's just… it's just bloody impossible, Mado."

He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts and she did not interrupt. "You're human, Mado. Homo Sapiens. You have five fingers on each of two hands. You have two eyes on the front of your head, separated by the bridge of a nose, which is mostly cartilage and rests over a mouth that has pink lips, which cover thirty-two small, hard, calcified, whitish structures called teeth. There are a million aspects of the homo sapiens body, inside and out, and you match them perfectly. You are descended from _primates_ , not birds. You can tell, because your bones are not hollow, and your skin is covered in fine hair just like all the rest of us primates, and you have tits. Amazing, fucking awesome, tits, but still, they're _tits_."

Gregory found that Madoka sitting between his thighs and leaning back against his chest was not the most comfortable position to try to talk to someone seriously, but he was unwilling to push the girl to the other side of the couch. Especially given that she'd probably sit facing him innocently drinking her tea while flashing him her skimpily covered muff.

"Greg, I said I preferred 'pussy'."

"Oh for fuck's sake, Mado!"

When he heard her snicker, he closed his eyes, counted backwards from ten, then snorted in amusement, himself.

"Well, whatever you call it, it's another trait just like every other female human, Mado."

"I do not think so. In fact, I would very much appreciate if you would…"

"AH! Stop! Don't! I'm not inspecting your… your…"

"Pussy, Greg. Is it so difficult to say that word? Would 'cunt' be better?"

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, no!"

She sipped from her can of Pokka Green Tea then asked, "Then is 'pussy' acceptable? I do not want to pick a term you cannot bring yourself to say; if there is a word you would prefer please suggest it. I would be glad to consider it."

Gregory thought, somewhat frantically, of every synonym for the female genitalia he could think of. Cooch? Crack? Va-jay-jay? Gash, muff, vagina, twat, quim, snatch…

"No, they are all terrible! What the hell? There's plenty of okay words for the male parts. Even if 'penis' sounds too silly for a part of the body men do not consider silly, there's always the old standbys of dick, cock, or even rod or wang or johnson or shlong. And that's without getting into terms like 'one-eyed trouser snake' or 'willie' or..."

"Wow, Greg, there really are a lot of words for penis. I will call yours a 'cock' if you have no objections."

Gregory felt his cheeks burning for no reason he could readily figure. "Um, that's fine I guess, Mado."

"And pussy?"

Gregory shook his head, "Damn Mado, that's just… awkward. But… okay. It is better than the other words I can think of and if you're comfortable with it then that's what matters."

"Well, you need to be able to say it too, Greg."

"That has yet to be determined, Mado."

He could _feel_ her pouting.

Damn, where had she come up with all this boldness? Just switching to English couldn't be the reason she was sitting here in her panties, leaning back against his chest, matter-of-factly stating she would henceforth refer to his penis as a "cock". Last month Mishi had confided to him that Madoka was a virgin and mentioned the girl was so bashful about sexual discussion that she wouldn't say "sex", but instead said "doing _it_ ", while stammering and blushing, like a… well, like a teenaged virgin.

Now she's throwing around Anglo Saxon vulgarities left and right?

"You were saying I have 'amazing, fucking awesome, tits', Greg? And this proved I was homo sapiens."

Gregory sighed and thought, _"Damnit. Yeah, I did say that, didn't I?"_

"Okay, Mado, the point is that you are _human_. The Sekirei even acknowledge they can reproduce with humans. By definition that means you are human, homo sapiens. And over the last month I have written down in the Notebook every cognitive bias I've ever spotted in your thought processes. It is impossible, _impossible_ , that an alien intelligence would develop the same heuristics, um, that's, ah, like, mental shortcuts or… toolbox… as terran humans have. Especially given that almost all our heuristics _and_ the cognitive biases that go along with them, came about in response to specific evolutionary pressures, just like our physical characteristics. We have five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot for some fairly specific reasons. By the same token, and for some fairly specific evolutionary reasons, we are prone to Illusory Correlation, or Confirmation Bias, or the Gambler's Fallacy, or Neglect of Probability, all of which I've caught you engaging in. Those exact same evolutionary circumstances aren't going to just happen to occur on some other world where intelligent life is evolving!"

Damn it was difficult to have a conversation like this talking to the back of someone's head while they are sitting in your lap. And now she was sitting quietly, not answering.

"Really, Mado, I'm not saying this just to be contrary or even skeptical. But the Sekirei are human. Human Plus. But still human. So telling me you won't behave like I know human females behave, because you are a Sekirei, doesn't reassure me."

The two sat quietly for a while, both engrossed in their thoughts. Eventually Madoka spoke; her voice was low and soft, "So because you are scared that I will someday, maybe, decide I no longer wish to be with you, that maybe, someday, I will wonder 'what was I thinking?', because you are scared of this maybe happening someday in the unforeseeable future, I get to die a virgin? Is that what you are telling me, Greg? That is fair?"

Gregory leaned his forehead forward, resting his head against the Sekirei crest on her upper back, though he was not aware of it because of the hoodie covering her back. His thoughts were bleak and his spirit weary from emotional overload. _"It would kill me, Mado-chan. If I ever crossed that line with you, I could not help but fall completely in love with you. Madly, passionately, completely, in love with you. And when you woke up one day and realized you were still young and beautiful and the man you were with was old and 'gross' it would kill me. I would die, right then and there."_

But he couldn't say that. It wasn't fair to Madoka to say that, and it was far too adolescent even in his own head.

"It is okay, I heard anyway, Greg."

"Oh." Gregory's eyes burned with welling tears. "Oh. Well. Goddamnit."

"Greg, this isn't that book, 'Lolita', and you are not, what was his name, Humbert Humbert and I am not Dolores Haze. I know you think of us that way and I can even understand why, given my lack of history, or, at least, a history you feel would make for a foundation for a person to build their life on, just like Dolores in the book. But you are not him and I am not her." She leaned her head back against him, on that bruised collarbone again. "You're thinking of an old song by someone named Cat Stevens?"

"You're still picking through my mind, Mado?"

"I could not help it. You were thinking about the song. Tell me how it starts."

Gregory gave up on blinking away tears and decided, instead, to ignore them as the first spilled over and traced down his cheek. His forehead still resting on Madoka's upper back, he mumbled the first lines of the song he had been thinking of. "Now that I've lost everything to you/You say you wanna start something new/And it's breakin' my heart your leavin'."

"I remember hearing that one," Madoka responded, "when I was listening to the music on your computer last week. I thought it was pretty, but… I guess I did not listen to the words very carefully."

Gregory could _feel_ her sifting through his memories, like someone flipping through a card catalog at a library. He could hear the growing frustration in Madoka's voice, building up the more she picked through his head and saw thousands of warnings from every age and in every medium, warnings of how what she wanted would end in tragedy, usually for him, sometimes for both. "So there really are a thousand examples of why this would break your heart, Greg, that we would end in tragedy? Novels and movies plays and songs, and... and real life too? Charlie Chaplin and… Lita Grey? She was twelve when she met Charlie Chaplin?"

"Yes, Mado, she was twelve when they met. They met again four years later, had an affair, and when she got pregnant with his son she was sixteen and he was thirty-five." Gregory's voice was hoarse and it was difficult to talk around the lump in his throat.

"Did it work out in the end, though?"

"No, Mado. It didn't end well. It never does. _Never._ It never ends well, Madoka. _"_

Madoka reached over to the coffee table and set her now-empty can of green tea on it, then took Gregory's now-flat-and-warm Diet Coke from him and put it next to it. She turned around to face him, resting her forearms on his shoulders and lacing her fingers together behind his neck. She bent her head down to catch his eyes, as he was looking down and to the side, embarrassed by his tears and by how she had picked out of his head how he was scared to fall in love with her and how he just knew she would be the death of him if he ever crossed that line.

He grimaced and made himself meet her beautiful blue eyes. She said, "There are other songs and other stories, Greg, you know there are. I listened to them on your computer so I know you can think of better examples!" Madoka suddenly leaned in close, almost touching his ear with her lips, and in her incredible, beautiful, voice, softly sang to him, "You ask me if there'll come a time/When I'll grow tired of you/Never my love. You wonder if this heart of mine/Will lose its desire for you/Never my love."

Gregory wondered how in the hell she could remember the lyrics for a song from 1967 that she maybe heard once. But he had to admit she sang it beautifully.

Madoka pulled back and looked him in the eyes, earnestness and open honesty shining from her face, "Greg, I will not live long enough for what you fear to happen to ever come about. But I also know that does not help, because it means even if I never chose it I will still leave you behind, someday. Someday soon, in all likelihood. So I cannot even promise you that I will not leave you. I can only promise you the opposite, it is almost certain I will be dead before summer. And I do not know how you could go on living when that happens."

He grimaced and looked away, "Me either, Mado."

She nodded, then pulled his chin around so he met her eyes again, then said, "I understand. So, knowing that I will very likely be dead before summer, knowing that it is unlikely you could find a way to go on when I am killed in the Sekirei Plan, understanding exactly what it is I am asking of you, _I am still asking,_ Greg."

Madoka stood up and tossed off his hoodie, and then, in one swift and elegant motion, dropped her cold and, no doubt, uncomfortable cotton panties to the floor. She stood back upright and posed for just a moment next to the couch, looking at Gregory with wide, clear, eyes.

He just couldn't look away. No matter how many times he told himself he should, he just couldn't.

She sat back on his lap but facing him this time, straddling his lap as he leaned back against the cushioned arm of the chaise-style couch. She put her arms back on his shoulders, linking her fingers behind his neck, and looked into his eyes. She switched to Japanese and said, "I will give you everything I have and I will give you everything I am until I am taken away from you by cruel fate. Please do accept me, Gregory-kun. Please do take all of me and give to me all of you, even if it _does_ mean some sad fate for both of us."

It took everything Gregory had keep meeting her gaze, the earnest look in her beautiful blue eyes was so intense, and her face was glowing with sincerity and even love. _"Seriously,"_ he thought to himself, _"you know what you're asking and you're asking anyway? How could you do that, Madoka?"_ Then the traitorous part of his mind answered, " _Because she knows it's no more unfair than the fact that she won't outlive you now, because of the Ashikabi bond_."

Okay, that was a fair point. So neither would outlive the other? That was fair, he couldn't argue with that. But still, there was no way he could deserve this, deserve her. If he gave in, he just _knew_ the karmic bill was going to be hell. More than he could pay, he had no doubt at all about that.

And yet… and yet…

For a handful of seconds, he continued to struggle futilely against what was more and more obviously the way his life was going. Eventually he surrendered to his fate.

At least the fall would be pleasant, even if he knew that when he hit the ground it would be excruciating.

Gregory whispered, "Okay, Mado-chan. Forever and ever."

The happy smile on her beautiful face was all he needed to see to know he had made the right choice. Her smile, against which he had no defense; not since the Saturday morning in December when it was first turned on him, and likely defenseless until the day he died.

As she eagerly kissed him, Gregory let go of the last of his reservations and his fears. Whatever happened from this point on, he would not regret the choice he made here today. Even if his life ended right now, while kissing this gorgeous angel who was, beyond all reason, _his_ , he swore to himself he would not regret anything, not one single moment.

For Gregory O'Donnell the rest of his life started today and for however long it was, he would share it with his exquisite, perfect, miraculous, Sekirei.

o.0.O.0.o

 _I've found a reason for me/To change who I used to be/A reason to start over new/And the reason is you…_

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

Songs referenced in this chapter. If you would like to hear them I recommend searching out the studio versions; skip the live versions that you'll find on youtube:

" _Wild World_ " by Cat Stevens, from his "Tea for the Tillerman" album.

" _Never My Love_ " by The Association, from their album "Insight Out".

" _The Reason_ " by Hoobastank. From the album "The Reason".

Back in Book One there was a lyric from a song quoted and the name wasn't given. It was " _Chevy Van_ " by Sammy Johns from his album "Sammy Johns".

* * *

(No Notebooks entry this chapter. And apologies for those expecting a lemon scene; many were written, none fit. The chapter insisted on ending there, so there it ends.

Also, this is the last "Book" currently complete at the time of posting, May 22nd 2015. Book Four (chapters 11-13 likely) will be posted as soon as it is complete, no estimate on when, unfortunately.)

* * *

Started Oct 31 2014  
Finished Jan 10 2015  
Final Edits May 10 2015  
Posted May 22 2015


	10. Bk4 - Ch1 Your New Life

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 4.1 – Ch10 Your New Life

 _Author's Note: It might be news to some, but we humans have body parts that we enjoy rubbing against other human's body parts, or even against our own body parts. These body parts all have scientific names and common names, as do all the various acts we enjoy performing with those body parts. If this simple reality offends your sensibilities, I implore you: read another story. I make no apology for describing common human actions using common English words._  
 _Yes, that means there's lots of sex stuff in this chapter. I had to make up for the lack of significant citrus in chapter 9 after all._

 _Bonus Material: As usual, there are images from Book 4 (Chapters 10, 11, and 12) up on the author's tumblr page.  
Fanfic dot net is now stripping all __**tumblr**_ _and_ _ **deviantart**_ _urls from author's profiles, so the links on the author profile are no longer working, but you can find the tumblr page at oakwinefanfic dot tumblr dot com and yes, the images from Book Four are NSFW so only visit if you are of age. Frankly, if you aren't of age you shouldn't be reading Rated M (Rated R movie equivalent) fanfic in the first place._

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{ _Farsense or other Metafaculties_ }  
[ _Memories_ ]  
" _Internal dialogue_."

Sunday, January 26, 2020  
Ebisu district, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

Gregory blearily opened his eyes; sleep dragged at his consciousness, reluctant to let go, in spite of his body _screaming_ at him to wake up. Lying on his back in the middle of the large bed that took up part of a wall in the safe house loft, he tried to judge what time it was by the light streaming through the windows. After noon, at least.

Not really surprising that it was so late, considering that he didn't get to sleep until almost dawn.

" _Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that feels good_ ," he thought.

Gregory lifted his head from his pillow and looked down his body. "Good morning, Mado-chan."

"Mmmm, mmmgah."

Gregory's head fell back against the pillow with a big smile on his face.

" _I'm going to have to start taking my vitamins!"_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory looked around the loft as he stumbled to the kitchen. Take-out containers and empty drink cans littered the counters, as well as the loft's coffee table, end tables, and the bed stands on either side of the bed.

Leaning against the island counter, Gregory picked up his "safe" cell phone, realizing his regular cell phone was at the family apartment. He stared blankly at the phone for a moment, the slow realization percolating through his fogged mind that he could not safely make the phone call he needed to make using this phone; he needed his regular phone.

" _Can't call a compromised number from this phone. Okay, so a quick trip to the apartment, make the call, then back here. No big deal. An hour, tops_."

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the refrigerator door opening, the appliance's internal light lighting the dim kitchen space of the loft. Dim, because sunset was a few hours past, Gregory realized.

He looked over to where his Sekirei, 37 Madoka, stood in front of the open 'fridge, looking for something. Wearing only an extremely brief thong, striped socks, and a long sleeved t-shirt, she looked good enough to eat as far as Gregory was concerned.

Gregory wasn't sure what the karma bill was going to be for his getting to have that, but he knew it was going to be huge, and it was going to be painful. Which was fine, as long as it was far enough in the future that it didn't interfere with tonight.

"Do we have any whipped cream, Greg?"

Gregory blinked at her, then quickly dialed the unsafe number from memory. When the other line answered, he immediately spoke in his clear, concise, Japanese, "Azama Yo, please."

While Gregory waited for his boss to come to the phone, he snapped a photo with the safe-phone camera before Madoka leaned over and pulled a container of Cool-Whip out of the refrigerator. He also made damn sure the photo didn't accidentally somehow get texted to his boss since he was on the phone with the man. _"That would be about my luck,"_ Gregory thought.

He watched intently as Madoka the slowly sauntered back towards the bed with a sultry smile on her slightly puffy lips.

He had never seen anything as sexy as that smile before.

Gregory's boss answered the line, "Hello? Azama Yo speaking."

"Yo-san, it is O'Donnell Gregory. I sincerely apologize for the late notice but I must take tomorrow off, a sick day, please. Yes. Yes, I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience. No, just a cold, the winter weather. Thank you, I will."

Gregory clicked the phone off and dropped it on the counter, ignoring it as it slid off the counter and clattered to the floor.

He _ran_ back to the bed where Madoka was waiting for him.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Wednesday, 29 January, 2020

Wednesday afternoon after school, Gregory walked up the stairs of the safe house loft and looked around for Madoka. Spotting her in the kitchen he called out, "Mado-chan! Please come give me a hand carrying some boxes from the Jeep. I parked it at that pay lot a few blocks away, but there's more than I can carry in one trip."

He dropped an armful of bags onto the kitchen's breakfast bar and received a "welcome home" hug and kiss from his Sekirei. She was wearing some sort of coverall, of a sort that the sides were open all the way down to the waist, the back was just a strip of cloth barely six-inches wide, and the legs were non-existent. It was amazingly distracting and calling it a "coverall" was an ironic joke. An amazingly _hot_ ironic joke.

"I missed you today, Gregory-kun!"

"I missed you too, Mado-chan! Come on; let's get this stuff out of the Jeep. Need to put on sweatpants or something?"

"It is not far, I will just wear my jacket. My legs do not really get very cold. What did you buy today?" Madoka pulled on her pink jacket to cover her very exposed torso as she followed him down the stairs. The two of them slipped on their shoes at the bottom of the stairwell and continued into the garage.

Gregory waited for her to clear the garage-door and join him on the sidewalk before pushing the button that lowered the door again. He answered, "Bunch of computer stuff. Can't safely bring my old main system here because I have no idea how much MBI may have messed with it, so I picked up enough parts to build three new systems from scratch for us here at the loft, courtesy of MBI's Platinum Card. One for you, one for me, and enough parts to build a third for a media server. Computer desks will be delivered to the storage rental since I didn't want them delivered to this address. We'll get some guys to help carry them here; it's always easy enough to find help if you have enough yen."

Madoka took Gregory's hand and held it as they walked along the sidewalk towards the small pay parking lot where he had parked the Jeep. "True, though I thought that those guys who you hired to get the new refrigerator up the stairs were going to kill themselves. I was sure you would have to offer them more money, Gregory-kun."

He grinned, "Not with you there wearing that tight tank-top that day. Those guys were more than willing to risk hernias and heart attacks just to prove to you how strong they were."

Gregory and Madoka succeeded in carrying all the rest of his purchases back to the loft in one trip though it was a close thing. Enough hardware to build three computers plus monitors, keyboards, an air-mouse for each as well as a conventional mouse, and many other accessories, it made for a lot of packages.

The rest of the evening was spent unpacking and organizing the components, then beginning assembly. Madoka absorbed instructions from Gregory quickly; he noticed he rarely had to repeat anything he ever told her.

"F _ind a decent IQ test that doesn't require a professional psychologist to administer_ ," he told himself. He was beginning to suspect Madoka's intelligence was at the same end of the bell curve as her looks and her physical fitness were and if that was the case he had to wonder if that were common for all the Sekirei. He could not imagine why it wouldn't be, if they actually were engineered by the "Kouten" for some long term colonization program.

Or they could just be really gifted Terran humans. He was still _very much_ on the fence as far as the whole "we are aliens" thing was concerned.

Madoka did not _act_ like a "smart person", but Gregory knew that had little to do with how efficiently and effectively her brain functioned. _Intellectual curiosity_ was a separate trait from sheer brainpower and how "smart" someone seemed to observers had a lot to do with how interested the subject was in learning new things _and_ how motivated the subject was to demonstrate that knowledge. Madoka found monotonous, detail oriented, tasks, such as the research tests they did with her Farsense metafaculty recently, very tedious and wasn't particularly interested in discovering new things just for the sake of learning new things, but that wasn't a function of intelligence.

Then again, Gregory found the persnickety note taking of details and tests that they had done with her Farsense boring as well (except for how amazing and exciting it was that he had absolute demonstrable _proof_ of frigging _clairvoyance_!). But yes, most of that day had been spent on "Okay, five feet further, can you see the face of the playing card I'm holding up now? And how about five more feet, can you see this playing card? How about the playing card in this box, can you see it? Can you see it in this box and around this corner?"

No, basic observational science was not always exciting. In fact, it was very often tedious and boring. But it _had_ to be done, otherwise neither he nor she would know what to count on with her metafaculties. Nor would they know if those metafaculties improved over time if they didn't have a baseline for their function now.

"So, what brought this on, Gregory-kun? Did you miss your computer so badly?"

Gregory looked up from snapping a video card into the slot on the motherboard of the computer he was assembling and he grinned over at Madoka, who was fastening the other machines motherboard to the case. "No, not particularly, as there's been more than a bit to keep me occupied while here."

That got a smile from her, which distracted him almost as badly as the barely there top of the "coverall" she was wearing. He continued, "I'd like to have all of the music and movies from my home file server available here though. And it would give _you_ more to listen to or watch during the days when you're here. Also, both of the cameras are almost full of data, and while it's all backed up to the cloud storage that's still a lot of photos and videos that I've not had a chance to review, process, select the best of, and so forth. A thousand raw photos sitting on a server somewhere is one thing, and a mostly useless thing at that. Compared to fifty outstanding photos cropped and lightened or darkened, put together so you can flip through them on your phone or tablet, and so you can show them off to people. That's something else, something worth having."

Madoka finished fastening the last screw to the mainboard then looked for the video card for that system. While she was looking through the mess of boxes and bags, she asked, "Why would you need to show the photos to anyone?"

Gregory held up the video card she was looking for. After she took it from him, she gave him a quick kiss in thanks and returned to her computer.

He watched her work as he answered, "Well, you might like the photos and want to share them with a friend, or they might be so awesome you just want to share them with everyone. People like sharing photos."

She looked up and narrowed her eyes at him. He held up his hands defensively, "Hey, no, I'm not going to be sharing any of _those_ pictures with anyone unless you give me permission! That's not the kind of pics I meant. The only actually naked pictures I would share would be with your complete permission and besides you can't post that sort of pictures to most websites anyway. But there _are_ a lot of technically-clothed-and-decent photos of you that I've taken that are still incredibly sexy that I'd like to get processed."

She pursed her lips as if she was considering whether to believe him or not. Madoka returned to her project, replying, "Well, okay. But I do get final say on any naughty pictures before they get shown to anyone! Or I will have to hide your cameras when we are in bed."

Gregory grinned widely, having now forgotten about assembling his own computer, distracted by watching her work on her own. Really, mostly being distracted the way the very thin material of the "coveralls" top she was wearing looked as her breasts moved about under it.

She continued working on assembling her computer, seemingly unaware of his intense gaze. "Did you have some specific plan for the best of the photos you have taken, Gregory-kun?"

He answered, "Yes, actually. I was thinking we need to step up our efforts to reach out to other Ashikabi and Sekirei, especially any who are in this part of town. Remember the social media pages for Ashikabi?"

Madoka nodded, "Yes, and I check it every day since _you_ have forgotten about doing so recently. I do not know if I like my user name being 'Sanjunana' though. That is so boring."

Gregory shrugged, "Maybe so, but I had to come up with something and using our full names didn't seem wise."

She grinned and looked up at him. "I like your user name; '37sAshikabi' means you are mine!"

"And very glad to be yours, my dear Sanjunana." Gregory leaned over the computer parts and kissed Madoka lightly. "So, that was a month and a half ago when I set up all that social media and those pages have just been sitting there, getting several hits a week, probably from new Ashikabi. We only have a few vaguely worded helpful suggestions for other Ashikabi to read and nothing to inspire them to reach out to communicate with us, which was the entire point. I figured most new Ashikabi are going to head straight to Google or Yahoo as soon as Minaka finishes his insane introduction, since those are the most popular search sites in Japan, by far."

Madoka nodded. "The Ashikabi probably will, though my sister Sekirei would not know to do so. It still astounds me how little I knew about life before I was released into the city. I had never heard of Wikipedia, or even Google. I do not know for sure about the Sekirei raised outside of Group 11, but if Group 11 was typical at all we can bet the Sekirei will not know anything about how to find information."

"There is that," Gregory agreed. "So, reaching the Ashikabi is essential. Once they search the most obvious terms they should find the Sekirei and Ashikabi Google+ group or one of the many other social media pages that auto feed from the Google+ group, like our Twitter, Global Homie, Facebook, Mixi, Ameba, several other services. Google+ is the most popular social media service in Japan these days so I used that as our primary service. That, and I can't stand Global Homie's interface. It's like that service was designed for low functioning ADHD thirteen year olds. Ugh. Anyway, on the Google+ page, in addition to posting some general info we've discovered about MBI and the Sekirei Plan, nothing that should get us in trouble with MBI, just more than _we_ started with, I also put together a series of photo albums for Sekirei and their Ashikabi. And since you and I are the only Sekirei and Ashikabi we know of so far you and I are the subjects of the one album that is up there now. Mostly you. All you, actually. No one in their right mind wants to see a photo of me if it means one less photo of you, I assure you. So, I figure fifty of the best photos I've taken over the last two months?"

She gave him a flat look at his self-deprecation before she started attaching power cables to the internal peripherals of her computer. She then asked, "Do you think it is safe? Letting them know who we are? Or that I am one of the already released Sekirei and such?"

Gregory continued watching Madoka intently work on assembling the computer, admiring how beautiful she was with that look of concentration on her face. "Well, Mado-chan, I think it is. At least, it's probably worth the risk. Supposedly, the First Phase is about finding your Ashikabi, and MBI was very clear they wanted to keep the Sekirei and the Sekirei Plan completely hidden at this point. So fighting in the streets and such as you've seen from Higa's people isn't supposed to be going on yet, that's got to be what the Second Phase is about. But yes, a _ny_ communication with other Ashikabi and Sekirei is going to be a security risk, but compare that risk to the sure danger of hiding in a hole for the next few months until MBI tracks us down and pulls us out of our hole and throws us at whoever the last standing Sekirei is, to be finished off."

That got Madoka to look up at him, with a grimace on her flawless face. "That is not a very nice picture, Gregory-kun."

"I know," he answered. "But at a certain point that's what we can expect to happen. So, hiding won't work, running won't work for reasons we already discussed, so our best bet is going outside of MBI's narrow Plan. We'll reach out to the other Ashikabi especially, because hardly any of them are going to be excited about 'Fight, Fight, Fight, until only one is left', I guarantee it. And while there's going to be some who get excited about the chance of winning some super prize, and others who will be led around by their cocks by their Sekirei and so participate in the Sekirei Plan, there's going to be a lot more who want nothing to do with it if alternatives are offered."

"Yes, our strategy, as you mentioned that Sunday afternoon when we were at the Four Seasons," Madoka said.

Gregory blinked at the oddly specific reference, remembering now that yes, their first discussion about strategy and tactics _had_ been on that Sunday afternoon exactly one month ago today, after Karen had left and his breakdown at the apartment. He and Madoka had spent the rest of that weekend at the Four Seasons Marunouchi, their first five-star hotel weekend courtesy of MBI. He recalled that he and Madoka had kissed that afternoon, at that hotel, deliberately and with purpose, for the first time (outside of the kiss that bonded them, that night in the Jeep). _"I'll bet that kiss in the hotel room is why she remembers the day so specifically,"_ he thought. Women were strange creatures, and Sekirei women stranger yet, with priorities and concerns very different from men and likely never to be fully understood by Gregory O'Donnell.

Madoka was now finished with attaching all of the power cables to the various internal devices inside the computer case and had begun running the shielded fiber optic lines from the motherboard to the pair of solid-state drives which would be the primary active data storage for the system. She had also run the secondary fiber optic lines from the motherboard to the new Molecular Memory Data Store, which was a colossal 10-petabyte state-of-the-art data storage "drive" of a sort that he had never been able to justify the expense for his old server. Now though, that fucking lunatic Hiroto Minaka and MBI was glad to provide!

She continued, interrupting his mental woolgathering, "And we will offer them those alternatives, Gregory-kun? How will we convince them?"

"Well, Mado-chan, it would depend on who they are and what they are like. At least emailing or texting would be a good start, though if we text any of them we have to mark the phone we use as immediately compromised, so don't let me forget that, okay? One angle I've thought of would be to offer them a friendly service like taking portraits of their newfound beautiful companion. It would be a kind of icebreaker. The Ashikabi and Sekirei will already be looking at the Google+ page, or one of the other social media services that will be mirroring the Google+ page's content. So they'll see our photo album, featuring the very best of the photos I've taken of my beautiful Mado-chan, nothing indecent of course, but gorgeous and sexy pics. All selected or edited to not show clear locations around here, just in case."

Madoka agreed with that precaution. "We will have to assume the Ashikabi are at least as knowledgeable as you are about how to use resources to look up locations, even from information in the background of a picture or from the… metadata, that is what it is called, right?"

Gregory nodded, certain that Madoka remembered exactly what metadata was from their previous discussions about his photography hobby. He marked her questioning tone as another quirk, evolved to reduce the appearance of having a perfect memory for details. Gregory had already concluded that being too smart was no more a desirable trait among Sekirei than it was among typical teenage girls. That mentality existed even here in Japan, though it was not nearly as bad here as it was in the States.

He affirmed what she had said, "Yes, metadata. I've got a macro programmed in Photoshop now that strips all of the metadata out of every photo I process, automatically, so that I don't accidentally forget and post the exact GPS coordinates of our loft here."

"That would suck, Gregory-kun. It is good that will not happen."

He grinned, "Yes, it is good that will not happen. And yes, I am assuming all the other Ashikabi are at least as information systems competent as I am. Many will be far more adept at using social media, computers, internet resources, as well as portable computing devices like phones and tablets. Just like Mishi knew far more than I know, even still, about the capabilities of the phones we carry around."

Gregory reached over to the coffee table where his Diet Coke was. After taking a sip he continued, "Anyway, the Ashikabi will be flipping through the albums because you are absolutely delicious," and that got him another smile from his pretty Sekirei, "and the Sekirei will be watching over the Ashikabi's shoulder because their Ashikabi just shouted 'hey, look, there's stuff about the Sekirei Plan here on Global Homie!' Hopefully that Sekirei will be thinking they want beautiful pictures of themselves and their Ashikabi too, why should Number 37 have all the fun?"

Madoka had stopped her own work to listen to and consider what Gregory was saying. "That is… actually very clever, Gregory-kun. Maybe more clever than you realize; almost all my sisters are vain enough to find it very appealing. Not just appealing but as soon as they see the kind of photos you have made of me and of us they will be burning with jealousy that they too do not have such an album. And if we get even one more Sekirei and Ashikabi album of portraits posted then it will snowball; truly most of my sisters cannot stand the idea someone may one up them in the realm of visible tributes to their beauty. There were only two Sekirei in Group 11 I can think of who would not immediately push to be included in the posted albums, and one is 86 Katsuragi. The other is 16 Toyotama's best friend, 18 Ichiya. The rest were very competitive in who was most beautiful."

Gregory chuckled, shaking his head. "I really can't imagine what life was like in such a cloistered environment, surrounded by twitchy ego-centric adolescent powerhouses, Mado-chan."

She grimaced, "It was difficult, if you weren't at the top of the Badass Scale. And even more difficult if you combined low Badass scores with high attractiveness scores."

Gregory's expression turned somber at the picture his Sekirei was painting. It sounded more like a women's hard-time penitentiary than a dormitory. "I'm sure it was, Mado-chan. Just another thing MBI, Minaka Hiroto, and anyone else responsible for what happened and is happening to the Sekirei will answer for. So, who came up with the term 'Badass Scale', that doesn't sound like official MBI terminology?"

Madoka gave him a small smile of appreciation for his understanding. "Oh, Yosuga started that, years ago. It was not a real thing, but the name caught on among the Group 11 Sekirei. There were many arguments about who was at the top of the Badass Scale. Not so many about who was at the bottom of it. That was always me." She grimaced at the memory then continued, "So, Gregory-kun, then it is just a matter of convincing the Sekirei that this is not a trap to catch them unaware and ambush them."

"Yeah, that's something that will take some convincing, Mado-chan. Still, it will be worth the effort I think. And maybe we can work up some good will among our fellow couples this way. Not only does a person feel gratitude towards a photographer that is able to produce pictures that make them look good, but in my experience if you can capture a picture of a couple that shows how much they care about each other, they often feel the photographer understands them. It establishes a bit of a trusting connection. It's what I like doing, so why not try to use it? Besides, just getting in touch with the others, even if we don't meet in person, is a good thing."

Madoka stood and smiled at him then nodded, making parts of her jiggle happily under her clothes. "I like it, Gregory-kun! And you should show me how to use the cameras too, so I can help!"

"Good idea, Mado-chan. For now though, stay right there while I grab my Nikon. The light coming through that window behind you is perfect and I can't resist the picture of you in that sinful excuse for an outfit."

 _That_ got another smile from his amazingly sexy Sekirei. They didn't get any more work done on building computers that night.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

" _It sure would be great if my Sekirei loved country music. I sure wish Madoka liked Mickey Gilley's music. I'd love to have a Sekirei who thinks Barbara Mandrell is the best singer ever…"_

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Saturday, 1 February, 2020

The next weekend they celebrated a week since becoming lovers by not leaving their bed unless absolutely necessary.

Madoka was glad the walls of the loft were concrete and notably sound proof. She'd discovered that Gregory appreciated the sound of her voice in bed, whether moaning in his ear or screaming in pleasure, so she made no effort to restrain herself.

Embarrassment for that sort of thing was another of those "not helpful" tendencies she was working on rooting out.

"Yes, OH fuck yes! Harder! Yes, Greg! So close, faster, do not stop, do not stop…"

"Ah, ah, oh, OW FUCK, ow, ow, fuck, hold on, Mado, wait…"

Madoka was now gritting her own teeth against the stabbing pain she too felt from a sudden tear in a muscle in his-her left thigh.

Last week, after their long talk and Gregory agreeing to being her lover as well as her Ashikabi, the first time he had entered her she had made a remarkable discovery; she could experience _everything_ he felt in their lovemaking now, not just his orgasm and the fantasy in his mind at the moment of climax. This was normally a completely wonderful thing, but…

If there was a downside to her sharing Gregory's perceptions, it was that she shared _all_ of them, including the bad ones. Usually it was helpful, like knowing when he was pushed to the limit of his endurance and was getting too winded to keep up the wild pace she enjoyed. She'd learned that it didn't do any good to push him to the point where he had to spend a half hour cooling off and catching his breath. Currently he was breathing hard, just as she was, but she knew he still had stamina left, but… it was too late now.

She tried to keep frustration out of her voice, "What is it, Gregory-kun?" Trying, and failing. _"Damnit, so close!"_

"Ow, damn. Hold on, Mado-chan, let me sit up… here, thigh muscle, left leg, here on the outside."

Madoka sighed, feeling Gregory lose his erection quickly due to the pain he was in. She knew exactly where it hurt, though she was careful to avoid him noticing that fact. Sadly, this was not the first time this had happened in the last week; there had been a half dozen other sprains and tears in Gregory's somewhat out of shape muscles and tendons. She was able to ignore his embarrassment that trickled over the connection easier than she could ignore the actual pain she still felt in her own hip. Maybe she could use the embarrassment he felt over being so out of shape to inspire him to put effort into getting into shape? And surely there was some way she could use her healing Redaction to fix up her Ashikabi's less-than-athletic body.

Something to add to her Reading List.

They untangled and Gregory sat up on the side of the bed, taking this opportunity to reach over to his nightstand and pick up the bottle of water he kept there. While he opened the cap and took a long drink of water, she placed her hand against Gregory's left thigh, up by the hip, and focused her attention on the muscles under the skin. Her hand gave off a soft, green, glow as she pressed it against the injured leg.

She murmured, "Here?" At Gregory's agreeing grunt, she continued, "Okay, I am going to try the Healing Probe, since I've got my Norito Boost, Ashikabi-kun. Wish me luck."

Gregory wiped his mouth then closed the cap on the water bottle and nodded. "Remember, try to feel your Farsense metafunction before you pull up your Redaction or you'll just flood the spot with general healing."

Madoka concentrated on her Farsense metafunction, wanting to "see" the injury in her Ashikabi's hip, then pulled her Redaction metafunction up to mix them together. At first, she could see the skin of Gregory's thigh and hip in perfect magnified high resolution, the tiny sweat pores and the fine hairs scattered around on the pale skin… but then…

 _{Redact-Farsense Healing Probe}_

 _To Madoka's perception she was abruptly "disembodied"; she was now only a point-of-view without the physical tools of her eyes. She was_ _inside_ _Gregory's leg, able to see the layers of skin, then the muscles, the blood vessels, strings of nerve bundles, deeper still she could see the dense bone of Gregory's femur, the ball and socket joint at the hip, and the large curved bone of his hip. She knew there was no light inside the leg to illuminate what she was seeing but she also knew she was not using her eyes to see anyway._

 _It was_ _strange_ _._

 _She focused her attention on her Redaction, letting it lead her to where the injury was. Right away she found herself looking at a tear in the dense ligament tissue at the bottom end of the… what was that muscle called… Madoka searched her memory but could not recall. She chided herself that she really should spend more time studying anatomy._

 _Whatever it was called, the wide band of muscle that connected the top of the iliac crest of the hipbones then down the outside of the hip where it then connected to a large, long, bunch of hard ligaments that stretched all the way to the outside of the knee. The tear was at the point that the wide, red, muscle connected to that long mass of ligament; it was separated from the muscle at points and strained at other points. It looked very painful._

 _Now that she had found the injury, Madoka went to repairing it. She had no hands to touch or to hold things here, but the intent to do so resulted in a similar sensation. She felt the muscle and the ligament in her grip, and then she held them together and pushed her Redaction power into the tissues, willing them to reattach and repair. She watched as the tissues did exactly that. It was a shame she could only do this when she was boosted by Norito. When she tried to do this sort of healing in her normal state it never worked._

 _A few moments of "looking" around the immediate area to make sure there were no other weak points in the complex web of muscles, ligaments, and tendons, that made up the hip and thigh, then Madoka relaxed her Farsight and withdrew her awareness from Gregory's leg._

 _{End Healing Probe}_

Madoka massaged the now-healed muscles, knowing how much Gregory enjoyed the feel of her hands on any part of his body. "I cannot believe I never learned to do such things while still in the MBI Sekirei Labs, but I guess if it only works when I am in my Norito Boost State I could not learn it before meeting you. So, Gregory-kun, among other new experiences, I am getting _much_ practice with using my Redaction to heal pulled muscles and torn ligaments. And practice with the Healing Probe, it worked first try that time! I found the tear almost immediately and I could tell that repairing it took only a fraction of the energy that it would have taken with my old method of just pouring healing energy into the area. So that is good, right? Is it better now?"

Gregory scowled at her teasing words and grumbled, "Yes, it is, and thank you Mado-chan. And sure, laugh it up. I know you're getting lots of chances to patch sprains and tears in my humble old body. You'll be old and decrepit someday and then you'll feel bad for wrecking your poor Ashikabi's body with your insatiable appetites. Minx."

She just laughed in response, "Is that a complaint, Gregory-kun?" Madoka looked up at her Ashikabi's dimly lit face, the slight creases and lines stark and rugged in the shadowy illumination of the nighttime loft. She kissed a trail along his thigh and up towards his hip as her hand moved to take hold of his flaccid penis. No, not penis. It was his cock! That was their agreed upon term, she reminded herself!

"Huh, complaint? You know better than that, sweetheart." Gregory reached over to the nightstand on his side of the bed and set down the now-half-empty bottle of water. "So, where were we?"

Her hand wrapped around its target and quickly restored his flagging spirits. "Well, Ashikabi-kun, it does not matter where we were; we have to start all over now!"

The two naked lovers moved back onto the large bed, scooting up to where the pillows were, below two of the ceiling-high windows that looked out over the back street below their loft.

In response to her insistence that they had to start over, Gregory quoted, "O, woe is me, to see what I have seen, see what I see!"

Madoka could not help but snort then laugh at Gregory's whimsical remark.

He raised an eyebrow while leaning back against the headboard of the bed. "It wasn't that funny, was it? Shakespeare, the comic, from Hamlet?"

"Hmmm. It was funny, but if I explain why it will make you all self-conscious and interfere with my fun, my Ashikabi." Madoka distracted him from the subject of anyone seeing what his eyes saw, woefully or not, by stroking his cock with one hand while raking her fingernails lightly along the bare skin of his upper thighs. She smiled her best smile up at him while rubbing the sensitive head of his cock against her cheek, one side, then the other.

She let herself sink into the split perception that she now associated with their lovemaking; feeling and seeing everything he perceived as well as everything her own body experienced. She felt his/her pulse race, sensed how he/she loved seeing his cock and her face together. She made a point to remember to do this again, because what it felt like, looking down at _that girl's_ face, her fingers wrapped around the long shaft of his cock, rubbing the head of it across her lips… it was so, _so_ , arousing!

She closed her own eyes and focused on Gregory's view completely, murmuring, "For now, just do please keep your eyes open and watch me do this, please, Gregory-kun?"

"Ahhh. Yes, okay Mado. Anything you want. Just keep doing that and, ahh… Jesus, Mary and Joseph that's good…"

Madoka was _highly_ motivated to learn how to do all the things Gregory had fantasized about during his "private time" in the shower over the last month. She had been surprised, their first time together, that sex with Gregory was not _all_ like the intense, overwhelming, lust he felt at the point of orgasm, with which she had become so familiar. He was actually a tender and considerate lover. And, she was not particularly surprised to learn, doing the things he fantasized about was not easy or instinctive; there were actual techniques and skills that went along with some of those fantasies. Techniques and skills she _needed_ to learn now! Like learning how to deep throat his cock without choking or gagging. So far, she had not managed more than half its 18-centimeter length so she was obviously going to have to do some reading on the subject.

For now, though, she would focus on how incredible it felt, and looked, to have at least half of it eagerly and energetically sucked by the most beautiful girl she had ever seen.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

"Mister Gregory?"

"Yes, Mister Tomoya?

Thursday, February 6th. Senior English. Third period. Gregory listened to the question from his student then stood and illustrated the answer on the whiteboard. Gregory then returned to sit at the teacher's desk, forcing himself to keep his personal tablet in his briefcase and only work on the school tablet, since it did not have the distractions on it that his personal storage had.

Glancing at the clock above the classroom door he noted the time was 10:57 a.m.

In the almost-two weeks since his life had changed thanks to Madoka, two weeks since he was convinced to help himself to the most addictive drug he could imagine, Madoka's body. Now Gregory found that the time he spent in class was miserable. He'd come to dislike every minute that kept him away from his Sekirei. He resented every sound he heard that wasn't her clear mezzo-soprano voice crying out in pleasure or whispering endearments in his ear.

" _I love you, Gregory-kun_."

He could live a hundred years and hear those words a hundred times every day and he would still want to hear them again.

A year from now would he be glad he kept his job instead of spending every minute he could with his Sekirei?

Why was he wasting his time here instead of being with her?

" _Ah, yes! There, oh, yes, there, oh, yes yes, fuck me, oh god! Yes, oh fuck me Greg!"_

He rested his head in his hands, his elbows propped up on the teacher's desk. Gregory closed his eyes and he tried, desperately, to clear his head and slow his heart. " _Get a hold of yourself, man! Calm, calm, breathe slowly, in, out. Don't think about her._ "

Don't think about the way her skin felt under his hands, so soft and smooth. Or how the taste of her was ambrosia, unearthly and delicious. How her blue eyes would _shine_ in the dimly lit loft when she looked up at him, her hand gently cupping his cheek as he slowly worked himself in and out of her hot, tight, body.

" _Greg, please look me in the eyes when you cum. Ah, ah, do not close your eyes, oh, yes… oh, yes, oh, oh, god!"_

Her wings flaring, repeatedly over the weekend, which surprised them a few times. They both laughed until their abdomen muscles ached when they'd been startled by confirmation that semen was just as effective an activator for Sekirei wings as saliva was.

He glanced up at the clock. 11 a.m.

" _I love you, Greg."_

"Mister Gregory?"

" _Like this, Gregory-kun?"_

Her pleased expression when he mentioned that the Sekirei Crest between her shoulders was a little darker pink now than it was right after her winging.

"Mister Gregory?"

11:02 a.m.

" _My Ashikabi, I will love you forever and ever."_

"Mister Gregory, are you okay, sir?"

Gregory shook his head, "Yes, I'm sorry, Miss Kyou. What was your question?"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka walked out of the linen store and headed back towards the loft. She was carrying a cloth tote bag with a handle in each hand, both full of western-style bed sheets. The two sets they had purchased with the bed were not going to be enough, unless she wanted to do laundry every other day.

She and Gregory had spent every night together, at the safe house loft, since he had finally given in and made love to her. It was amazingly fun, but now she was not sure how safe it was; if MBI was tracking Gregory's original cell phone then it showed him just staying at the O'Donnell apartment all the last almost-two-weeks instead of going back and forth to school as was usual. However, neither she nor Gregory was willing to give up their time together to spend hours going back and forth from the safe house to the O'Donnell apartment every evening and morning.

And Gregory was adamant about the two of them not having sex in the O'Donnell apartment, so staying there was out of the question as far as Madoka was concerned. There was no way she was giving up her nightly fun, watching from Gregory's eyes and feeling with Gregory's body what it was like making love to _that girl_.

Spending all of the time at the safe house loft was problematic though. This morning it was a close thing for Gregory even getting out the door to get to school on time. As far as Madoka was concerned Gregory should quit his job so that they could spend all of their time together, the MBI Card certainly provided for them. But his career was important to Gregory and something he'd worked on for years, so she did her best to accept his need to be at the school.

As Madoka walked, she realized the vague sense of anxiety she had been experiencing for the last hour was actually coming to her through her bond with Gregory. It was usually difficult for her to sense more than the direction he was in if they were separated by more than a handful of meters. But there was definitely a feeling of distress coming from him today.

She tried to send reassurance over their bond, " _Only one more day till the weekend; it will be okay."_

This morning it was cool and clear in Shin Tokyo, so Madoka was comfortable in green cargo pants, a snug, pink, long sleeved t-shirt, and tennis shoes. And her new wireless earbuds that played music from her phone, too! She had purchased those and the same kind of wireless mic that Gregory used, the kind that was tiny and stuck to your cheek. The one she purchased for herself was shaped like Hello Kitty, unlike Gregory's.

Her outfit had been chosen for walking comfort since she was afoot on her to-do list trips today. She had considered taking her bicycle on her shopping rounds but she had to be honest with herself and admit that she was still a bit sore to be bicycling. Using her healing abilities on herself never worked as well as on others and after almost two weeks of taking every opportunity they could to have sex, well, walking was not so bad whereas her bicycle seat was very… intrusive and unforgiving.

She had already visited the local post office to withdraw the daily limit on cash from her MBI card. She had stashed the ¥500,000 from the ATM in the bottom of the knapsack that she wore, done her linen shopping, and picked up some drinks from the corner store. So now, it was back to the loft where she really needed to do some housekeeping.

Gregory led the charge last Tuesday evening in cleaning up all the take-out boxes and soda cans that were littering the loft. He had grumbled that he'd wanted to coming home Tuesday and take her to bed immediately but instead the loft was still a mess from the weekend. He wasn't critical of _her_ about it, not directly, but Madoka couldn't help but feel maybe she _could_ have spent the day doing something productive instead of lounging around.

What surprised her was that the idea of doing housework did not bother her, at all. Maybe it was because Gregory didn't pretend cleaning was "woman's work"? He was more than glad to do the same work; he grumbled because he had been at his job all day and instead of being able to enjoy time together that evening, they had to spend that time cleaning up the mess. She _had_ spent Tuesday lounging in bed, when she _could_ have cleaned up so they could have more time together doing more fun things.

She wasn't sure why her usual desire to avoid doing things like dishes or sweeping and mopping was absent. In fact, she felt that taking care of the place they built to be together was something she _wanted_ to do now.

As she crossed the busy crosswalk for Meiji Dori street, Madoka noticed that a plump, middle-aged, salaryman in a rumpled suit had been trying to be subtle about watching her breasts bounce as she walked past him. As well they might bounce, since she had decided some days ago to forgo wearing a bra ever again unless absolutely necessary.

" _Tits, Madoka, you agreed to calling them tits, not breasts. Gregory finally gave in and agreed to the term 'pussy', so we agreed to call them 'tits'. So think tits, not breasts."_

Mishi would be scandalized at Madoka's braless state, Madoka was sure, and how ironic was that? But _one look_ through Gregory's perceptions at what her braless, hard-nippled, t-shirt-covered tits looked like and she had been utterly convinced that bras were a tool of evil and repression, never to be suffered again.

So, before she got too far ahead of the ogling salaryman, Madoka put on her best smile, spun around and walked backwards for a few steps, and deliberately putting a bit more "bounce" in her stride.

When the salaryman's eyes guiltily jumped upwards from where they had been watching her ass, Madoka gave him a cheeky wink and then turned back around, continuing along her walk back towards the loft with a broad smile on her face.

Madoka thought about how just a month ago she would have been horrified at even the suggestion of flaunting herself at some overweight man in his 50's. That was before she learned, first hand and in full sensory intimacy, what she looked like through a man's eyes. Before she learned what men felt when they looked at her.

Now she couldn't _help_ but share a little of what cost her nothing. Share some of what was given to her for free but had more value than gold and diamonds.

The last two weeks, seeing herself through Gregory's eyes throughout their lovemaking, had dramatically affected the way she saw herself. Madoka was addicted to _that girl_ ; addicted to what _that girl_ did to Gregory-Madoka, what _she_ looked like and felt like and tasted like. More addicted to it than Gregory was.

She had still not told him about the way she had been piggybacking on his orgasms during the month before they started sleeping together, when he would masturbate. Nor had she told him how she now experienced everything he experienced, when they had sex. She knew she should tell him, but the moment just hadn't seemed right.

Madoka slowed her pace, frowning in concentration. She thought she sensed someone nearby, another Sekirei. She stopped and stood with her back to the display window of a furniture store and closed her eyes, concentrating her Farsense. Yes, there was an unwinged Sekirei nearby. Whoever she was, she was about 200 meters away and up, probably on a rooftop. Opening her eyes, Madoka looked around and spotted a clothing store she had not seen the last time she walked this way down the Meiji Dori street. It was off to the left and the loft was to the right, but she figured she had time for a little detour and it fit the tactics she and Gregory had decided on for what to do if she noticed another Sekirei while she was out running errands.

Step 1: Get off the street and into a store, somewhere out of line-of-sight for someone atop the roofs of the ubiquitous tall buildings in western Tokyo or someone on the sidewalks or the streets.

Addendum to Step 1: Don't worry about getting cornered in a store; they all have back doors that you can push your way through if you must.

Step 2: Use Farsense to gather as much information about the other Sekirei as possible.

Addendum to Step 2: Keep up a running verbal commentary on what you are sensing; the phones are recording everything at all times so having that to work from later will be invaluable.

Step 3: Wait and see if the other Sekirei came closer or moved away.

Walking into the clothing store she had selected, Madoka quickly picked several tops and jackets off the rack near the front of the store and moved towards the dressing room. Belatedly noticing that the pretty girl at the cash register was watching Madoka carefully, the little blonde Sekirei realized carrying canvas bags around a retail store _was_ probably suspicious. Embarrassed, she approached the counter.

"Would it be okay if I leave these here while I try these on?" Madoka set the tote bags with their expensive Egyptian cotton sheets as well as her knapsack on the counter. _That_ got her a friendly smile and approval for leaving the bags in the care of the clerk, which in turn led to a friendlier demeanor from the other sales staff.

Madoka mused on the social faux pas and on the difficulties caused by being raised in the very limited environment of the MBI Sekirei Labs. _"It is the little things we never consider that make a person stand out. How unprepared all of us are for life in this complex world."_

In the dressing room, Madoka closed her eyes and concentrated her Farsense, searching for the other Sekirei. She also began a sub-vocalized running commentary on everything she was now thinking and everything she was now sensing via her Farsense, so that her phone's cheek mic could pick up the commentary and record it, making it possible for later review.

At first Madoka's point of view was from inside the store. She focused her efforts on moving her "point of view" outside onto the street and closer to the other Sekirei, so the city block of concrete and steel buildings weren't in the way.

There were several multi-story buildings on this side of the street in the direction she sensed the other Sekirei. Her target was likely atop one of them. There, on the roof of a 14-story apartment building that backed against the Shibuya River, just like the safe house loft did.

She was glad that, at Gregory's suggestion, she'd been practicing moving her point-of-view. She could now, within some distinct limits, actually look _around_ corners.

It was not easy though, especially when her point of view was rising away from the street, up at a diagonal towards the Sekirei 200 meters east and 14-stories up. Madoka found it disorienting to seem to be "off the ground", which fact she tried to keep to herself as it vaguely seemed a personal failing, something she should be ashamed of.

She held the focus as long as she could, moving her point-of-view as close to the other Sekirei as possible. Then, holding that position, she "zoomed in" from that point to try to see who it was who'd set off her alarms.

The other Sekirei was definitely unwinged, that was even clearer now. She was very powerful for an unwinged Sekirei though, if Madoka was viewing her correctly. At least twice as powerful as Madoka, easily, and Madoka was a _winged Sekirei_.

Could the other Sekirei be a single number? What did she look like? The building the other Sekirei had chosen was unfortunately the tallest in the immediate area and Madoka could only get a vague image of long blonde hair stirring in the high winds that were common that far above the street, even "zooming in" as much as she could. It was the _angle_ that was the problem; she needed to move her point-of-view higher…

" _Ow!"_ Madoka found her perception harshly returned to the dressing room. _"Okay, I would like to avoid doing that again. That was extremely unpleasant."_ It would seem that losing control of her Farsense, and the resulting deactivation of the metafunction, resulted in some kind of backlash. Painful backlash. She should tell Gregory about that, later.

Gingerly reaching out with the general, unspecific, form of her Farsense that operated as her early warning about other Sekirei, she noted that the unwinged Sekirei who had set off her alarms had moved on, at least far enough away that Madoka could no longer sense her.

Madoka resumed shopping with a smile and a sense of relief. She would need to write down the specifics of this encounter as soon as she got back to the loft, and listening to the audio recording of her subvocalizing her stream-of-consciousness for the last five minutes would help get the details down correctly. For now, she picked out a new cotton chemise which looked thin and likely to present her tits nicely, as well as a few pair of socks, which looked thick and warm.

She paid with her pocket cash, since Gregory had stressed that they needed to avoid using the MBI Card at too many merchants in a detectable pattern around the safe house. If it was a small, local, purchase, use cash.

They certainly had enough of it. Sixteen million yen, at last count of the contents of their safe. The ¥5,000 for socks and a top was hardly worth thinking about.

As she left the store with her new purchases and her tote bags, she fell back to thinking of the salaryman at the crosswalk. She wondered why she had ever thought that a fifty-year-old pudgy man was such a danger that doing anything other than _hiding from his eyes_ was a risk she just _had_ to avoid. Why had she ever been outraged at the idea of a "pervert" looking at her and appreciating what he saw?

Had she worried so much that someone might get the wrong idea? That they might mistake friendly flirtation for an invitation to more? Perhaps. But even if she wasn't able to punch holes in concrete walls like most Sekirei, she really had little to worry about from any individual human male trying to take more than was offered.

Not anymore at least. Not since her winging. And especially not since her encounter with 16 Toyotama and her Ashikabi's analysis of that encounter. She was far more in touch with her abilities now than when she had been newly released from MBI; any human male who laid a hand on her now without her consent would regret it.

She had chosen to let go of the fear she had somehow been infected with by the scientists and administrators at MBI. Now she happily shared a bit of sexy awesomeness with the people around her.

And when she had chosen to walk away from that conditioned fear, she had felt free, truly free, for the first time in her life.

Even though it meant scowls from the women around her.

She figured that they disapproved because they too lived with the same fear she used to live with. It wasn't their fault. They didn't have Sekirei powers, not even the odd powers Madoka had been given, so she forgave them their hostility and their disapproving clucks at the sight of her t-shirt covered, happily bouncing, braless, tits which were so obviously enjoying their freedom and the cool air.

Of course refusing to live in fear did not mean taking security for granted, not with MBI and the Sekirei Plan hanging over their heads. She made sure no one was watching as she punched in the security code for the ground-floor garage door. Once the door had rolled up enough to walk under she stepped into the empty garage under their safe house loft. She made sure the garage door closed behind her and that the steel door leading from the garage to the stairwell locked behind her as well.

At the top of the stairs, Madoka stepped into the space she was coming to love more than any place she had ever known. It was her place with Gregory and that made it precious.

Madoka tossed the new bed linens onto the bed then stripped off her t-shirt and cargo pants, grabbing a cotton camisole from her dresser. She had grown reluctant to wear much clothing in her and Gregory's place. Some clothing, because Gregory liked that. But not much, because Gregory liked that too.

She put the cash from the ATM into their floor safe and spun the combination wheel to lock it, then updated the white-board in the kitchen area with the new balance in the safe: ¥25,300,000

Frankly, the safe was getting too full. She would ask Gregory about alternatives; maybe they could keep some of their emergency cash elsewhere?

Madoka walked to one of the windows that overlooked the "back alley" that ran along one side the rental block. She loved watching the people busily going about their day. The old man with the noodle wagon who passed by every two hours. The wrinkled obaasan who swept the alleyway for ten meters on either side of her small curio shop on and off through the day.

Soon enough Madoka felt the need to get busy on the rest of her to-do list. After stripping the king –sized bed of the rumpled and sweaty sheets from last night and replacing them with the new clean sheets, Madoka set to cleaning the loft. It was a big room but it did not take much clutter for it to start feeling messy.

Today was Thursday, so tomorrow she would have the time to do a good cleaning of the place and go shopping for food to fill the refrigerator before the weekend. A weekend she hoped to spend entirely in bed, being in Gregory's head and seeing what he saw and feeling what he felt as he made love to her over and over again.

There was nothing in the world that was as beautiful as what Gregory saw when he looked into her eyes.

Madoka could not get enough of it.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Friday, 7 February 2020

The next morning found Gregory dressed in his work clothes and standing at the island counter in the safe house kitchen. It was 6:30am and he _had_ to leave in the next five minutes or he would be late for work, again.

He had his briefcase, his suit jacket was on, and his tie was tied. His shirt was clean and pressed; Madoka had made sure of that, for him.

He had already had a cup of coffee to try to help wake up. But he was tired, in spite of the coffee. He didn't get to sleep until 2:30am, even though he kept telling himself he needed to sleep. But he couldn't resist Madoka's body just one more time. And then another. He was exhausted now though; he couldn't keep trying to get by on three and four hours of sleep a night.

Gregory stared sightlessly at the far wall of the kitchen, gripping the island countertop so hard that the tendons stood out in stark relief on the back of his hands.

Behind him, four meters away, he could hear Madoka shifting on the bed, stirring the comfortable sheets around her glorious, naked, body.

"Gregory-kun? Are you okay?" Her sleepy voice caressed his ears, making him smile in spite of everything. Her voice always sounded _so_ good to him.

"Gregory-kun?"

And she was naked under those warm, soft, sheets. Her magnificent, utterly fuckable body was just waiting for him to ravage, more than willing, and all for him.

" _Get hold of yourself, man. This is craziness. Come on, get some perspective."_

Gregory continued staring blindly at the darkened wall of the kitchen and thought of a line from Shakespeare he'd never understood before, " _Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry_ …"

That had always sounded like a line of bullshit that a guy would tell a woman. The kind of thing a woman wanted to hear but no guy ever really meant.

He understood it, now. He'd fed and fed but was still _starving_ for her.

He had already called in just last week, after five years on the job with not calling in sick once. He was late for work yesterday, also very rare for him. His boss had not said anything about his behavior yet, but it was bound to happen, soon. Even as valuable a teacher as Gregory was, he could not get away with more than a week of not taking care of his responsibilities.

Gregory jumped when Madoka's hand touched his back; he had not heard her get out of bed nor had he heard her pad barefooted across the concrete floor to where he was standing. She moved up against his side and looked up at him, the dim light from the kitchen appliances illuminating her face, showing worry and concern.

"What is it, Gregory-kun?"

He turned his face away from her, embarrassed by the tears that suddenly burned in his eyes. Gregory clenched his teeth and tried to keep the knot of pain in his chest from coming out. The effort made his shoulders shake.

He took a deep breath and tried to speak but could not get the words out. He shook his head and tried again.

"I can't do this, Mado. I can't take another day of watching the clock and feeling every second tick away slowly, so damn slowly. It's killing me, it really is." Gregory felt hot tears streaking his cheeks and he cringed at how much of a damn crybaby he seemed to have turned into in the last few weeks.

Madoka managed to wiggle herself in between him and the counter, turning him to face her forcibly. Her brow wrinkled with confusion and her mouth set in a line. "Gregory-kun, I do not understand. Tell me, what do you mean?"

Then he could barely make out Madoka's features as tears filled his eyes again. Gregory shook his head in frustration. For once he could not figure out how to say what he was thinking and feeling. Or maybe he just didn't like how it sounded in his own head so he couldn't make himself say it out loud. He had pointed out to others, like his daughter and even to Madoka, often enough, how they knew what they were feeling or thinking, they just did not like the way it sounded if they said it. It was probably only fitting that he be crucified on that cross, himself, finally.

"Just read it out of my head, Mado. Please."

Gregory took both of her hands, pulled them up to his temples, and held her hands there.

Madoka looked up into his eyes and he could tell she was alarmed as well as confused. She shifted to English, probably to see if it worked better for communicating whatever the problem was. "Greg, are you sure? I am not sure I am comfortable invading your mind like I did with 16 Toyotama…"

"Mado, just _look_ and if you can _fix_ it, please, just fix it! Please. I can't fucking take it anymore. I don't care what it takes, please, fix it." He was back to shouting at her in English, but this time it did not make her angry, it just convinced her of how serious his need was.

"Okay, I will look, Ashikabi-kun. I will look."

Madoka closed her eyes and concentrated on seeing Gregory's mind. They had talked about this, about how "seeing" Toyotama's mindscape was one thing and "doing" something within it was another, like how it took a different effort to push Higa Izumi away from Toyotama's consciousness.

This was the _other_ way her Redaction Probe worked. Without using Farsense alongside her Redaction, she ended up looking inside their _mind_ instead of looking inside their skull. She would need to get a good Redaction Probe to _find_ the things in a person's mind she wanted to change, if anything. Then once found, maybe she could _fix_.

It was difficult, she hadn't tried seeing someone's mindscape except for with Toyotama two weeks ago; what she did when she saw and felt things through Gregory when they were having sex was something very different from seeing and interacting with his consciousness, his memories, his mind. She had not been interested in experimenting with this on Gregory, especially considering how much more invasive the Redaction Probe was than the light "mind reading" thing she could do with him to pick up this basic moment-to-moment thoughts. She learned _that_ with Toyotama's memories; she had not even meant to see some of them but even a second's curiosity about a memory and Madoka had been experiencing what Toyotama remembered.

Gregory said that everyone had memories and thoughts that they did not want to share with anyone, even a trusted and beloved other, and that this was normal and even healthy. So she avoided doing more than sharing his sensorium while they had sex or occasionally skimming his surface thoughts for what he was thinking about at the moment.

Now though, something was hurting her Ashikabi and she had to find out what it was so she could heal it!

She "pushed" with her Redaction and found herself in Gregory's mindscape.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

{ _Mind Redact Probe_ }

Gregory's mindscape was very different from the dark atmosphere of Toyotama's. There were no low clouds and cracked dry ground with fires illuminating memories. Instead, Madoka saw silvery bubbles, numbering in the millions, which spread out into an unfathomable distance of white-green sky. The surface of each bubble showed faces or places, events and people in Gregory's life.

It also struck her how different this "Mind Redact Probe" was to the "Farsense-Redact Healing Probe" that she used to view the interior of a body in order to find and heal injury. The Healing Probe was like… using her actual eyes but _inside_ the body, kinda.

But this? She was pretty sure there was no physical location in Gregory's body where there were millions of silvery bubbles and a vast white-green sky.

Focusing on her mission and resisting the temptation to indulge herself by viewing Gregory's memories of her, which several of the silvery bubbles nearby showed, Madoka tried to find her way from all this memory to wherever Gregory's thoughts were, to where _he_ was.

She swiftly located the core of Gregory's consciousness, a dark place where images, sounds, feelings, and thoughts flickered past so rapidly that she had a difficult time understanding them at first. What she did _not_ have a hard time quickly grasping was how powerful they were. Just looking, so that she could understand them, caused her to be yanked into the whirpool of emotions and thoughts.

She felt what it was like to be Gregory as he tenderly cupped her breast, watching her face,as she slept. What it was like for him to come to bed with her waiting for him, the joy that suffused him every time she whispered her love to him. The lust that made his heart race when he looked at her ass in her tight jeans or saw her nipples harden under a shirt. The intense satisfaction that sex with her was. The pride-guilt of _having_ her, of _fucking_ her _pussy_ with his _cock_ …

The torrent of thoughts was pulling at her, growing stronger and more demanding as they went. Madoka was now scared that she would be swept away by the powerful, chaotic, and out of control, feelings. The visions kept appearing and playing out then being replaced by the next, over and over.

The heady rush of joy, happiness, or satisfaction that each scene contained was countered by pain and constant awareness of loss in other scenes, which floated around the edge of the dark place, only occasionally inserting themselves into the looping stream, but still doing their damage. The guilt he felt over his infidelity to his wife, the great sadness of the loss of his daughter. Shame at the realization he felt the loss of his daughter more than he cared about the loss of his wife. The guilt he felt at giving into his own desires and taking her…

The worst though were where memories of this week where Gregory was at his job; he was trying to do his job, take care of his responsibilities, but he _could not stop thinking of her_. _She_ wanted to weep for how much it hurt to be away, _she_ wanted to toss everything aside, grab ahold, and never let go of the girl/her in Gregory's thoughts.

She understood now what was hurting him so much.

She looked on in shock at how wretched Gregory felt and how he was literally suffering because of how he felt about her. In a more innocent time, she would have thought it flattering for a man to obsess over her, but seeing it like this, feeling it, herself? This was worse than Toyotama's memories of flogging 101 Oriha. Only a fool who did not know what she was talking about would wish this on anyone, much less upon someone who cared for her.

She tried to step back, to distance herself at least a bit. She was holding on by her fingertips against a raging flood of emotions. And then she was not watching but _being_ the girl Gregory thrust into with desperate intensity, his desire devouring her, to make her his, which she _already was_ but he did not believe it.

The strength of Gregory's attachment to her and attraction to her was pushing him over the edge, and she knew she could not afford to be carried away or she would never be able to help her Ashikabi.

There. Just that thought, " _help her Ashikabi_ ", seemed to have power. With a great sigh of relief, she stepped back from Gregory's moment-to-moment awareness, leaving him hugging that girl to his chest, and she considered what she could do to _help her Ashikabi_.

Madoka made a mental note to remember those magic words in case she got in trouble again.

She could now perceive the entirety of all the memory bubbles and she could see multi-colored threads that connected them, how the threads also connected to streams of spoken and written words in English and Japanese that made up part of what she understood as "thinking". She clearly made out that there were areas in the distance where darkness covered sections of the bubbles and the streams.

Moreover, she could now appreciate that the deep darkness covering all the space near where the core of Gregory's awareness resided was an injury, a disease, a wound, which needed to be healed or he could be lost to it.

It was all so complex! How memories and thoughts were intertwined and memories were tied into other memories. Recall of events, memories of feelings, awareness and consciousness and emotions, self-worth and self-doubt, childhood traumas and suppressed fears, all connected in a vast three-dimensional lattice that was _utterly_ beyond her ability to _see_ all of much less understand.

And that… _darkness_ , filling the center. She could _tell_ it was a growing sickness but how could she tweak here and cut there, attach this thought to that memory in a healthy way a million times over in order to get rid of the darkness?

She doubted she would _ever_ be able to consciously, deliberately, treat this kind of injury. This was an order of magnitude more complex than mere brain surgery.

The only thing she could think to try was to do what she used to do for healing, before she learned anything about using the Farsense and Redact Probe to see the inside of her target's body so that she could deliberately repair the torn tissues she found. Before, she would just put her hands on the wound, pour her healing into it, and hope that it fixed itself.

But this hurt was so large, so strong, it so dominated every part of Gregory's current awareness! How could she fill all of that space with healing? It would take more energy than she had in her whole body!

Oh. Yes!

And she knew then what she could do.

{ _End Mind Redact Probe_ }

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka opened her eyes and looked up at her Ashikabi's unhappy face. Without moving her hands from his temples, she lifted herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him, gently, lovingly. Her bright yellow wings flared out behind her, illuminating the entire loft in neon fluorescence.

Before he could return her kiss, before he could realize and act upon the irresistible impulse to grab her and take her back to their bed, an impulse that _she_ felt through her connection to him, she broke the kiss and spoke, her hands still on either side of his head.

" _By the life of my pledge, may the harm to my Ashikabi be cured_ _ **."**_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

She waited, watching his face, hoping beyond hope that it had worked. Gregory took a deep breath and released it with a huge sigh, tension draining from his expression and his body.

He smiled.

Madoka asked, "Do you feel better now?"

Gregory laughed, his baritone voice strong and happy. He answered, "Do I feel better now? Yes! I feel great, actually. Better than I've felt in, well, forever!"

She wrapped her arms around his slim waist and squeezed. "Oh, Gregory-kun! I am so glad. I was so worried."

When she realized he wasn't hugging her back she relaxed her grip and leaned back to look up at his face.

The embarrassed expression he wore, and his refusal to meet her eyes, caused her to worry. "Gregory-kun?"

"Um, yes? I'm sorry, but… who are you, miss?"

Madoka sighed and dropped her face into her hands. She growled, "No!" She shook her head in disgust. "It looks like the easiest way for my Norito to 'heal' the problem of you thinking about me too much was to make you to forget who I am! Now I have to fix that!"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 _ **Metapsychics**_

 ** _Metapsychic Abilities_**

 _Farsense_ (New Data) – With practice, Madoka can now use her Farsense metafaculty combined with her "healing" ability of Redaction to visually see within a target's body (aka a "Healing Probe"). The point of view of her perception moves to a spot inside the target body, allowing her to search out and find damaged tissues and once located she can exert her Redaction metafaculty to repair the damage. She is, essentially, a walking MRI/Cat-scan/X-Ray machine, with far higher resolution than any technological method we've discovered yet for seeing within a body.

 _Redaction_ (New Data) – Madoka is now able to easily differentiate between the two types of Redaction Probe she has discovered.  
Using her Farsense/Redact Probe (aka "Healing Probe") allows her to "see" inside a patient's body, her point-of-view literally moves within the patient. This provides for the deliberate use of Redaction to heal, for example joining together two pieces of muscle which have torn apart, which is far more energy efficient than her previous "just pour healing energy into it until it is fixed" technique.  
Alternatively, using her Redact alone to probe a patient's mind (aka "Mind Redact Probe") she enters a visual representation of their mind, with memories and thoughts and many other elements she can't identify yet, all laid out for her to examine, as opposed to viewing the brain matter inside the skull cavity. She _can_ view the brain in the skull cavity, but that's by using the aforementioned Healing Probe (Farsense+Redaction).  
What this means for advancing humanity's understanding of the structure of the mind, the nature of thought itself, is beyond my ability to imagine. I only know that we cannot afford to let this amazing young woman be killed in some senseless "game" such as what MBI and that fucking lunatic Hiroto Minaka are forcing upon the Sekirei.

 _ **MBI**_

 ** _MBI Elements_**

As neither Madoka nor I have been informed what the official designations are for these elements of MBI's operation are actually called, we have taken to referring to the presumed aspects of MBI that we are most likely dealing with by the following terminology:

 _Sekirei Plan Operations Management_ – The presumed executive element of MBI's Sekirei Plan Operations department in charge of overall decision-making as well as handling the day to day issues of running the Sekirei Plan. It would be personnel in this element who would make decisions about whether a Sekirei or Ashikabi were breaking rules of the "game" and if so, what sanction was appropriate for that violation. One assumes they would also be monitoring the secrecy so important to the First Phase as well as planning for execution of the later Phases.  
We assume that Hiroto Minaka resides at the top of the Sekirei Plan Operations Management org chart, but have no assurance that is actually the case. That fucking lunatic would not be the first figurehead ruler of an organization.

 _MBI Intelligence_ – The presumed element of MBI's overall Sekirei Plan Operations department that is responsible for collecting and checking all data about the Sekirei and their Ashikabi. It is assumed this element of Sekirei Plan Operations tracks the purchases made with the MBI Platinum Cards as well as other data such as cell phone usage, GPS location tracking, human intelligence about the Ashikabi (family names, addresses, employer info, etc).

 _MBI Security_ – The presumed element of MBI's overall Sekirei Plan Operations department that is responsible for acting on directives issued by the Operations Management, aka, The Muscle.  
Madoka says they were all informed that a Sekirei was held back from participation in the Sekirei Plan to be part of MBI's enforcement efforts, known by the ridiculous moniker of "The Disciplinary Squad". Why one Sekirei would be a Squad is a mystery. Madoka says she got the impression that in the past there were more members of this unit but that at the start of Phase One there was only one member.  
No information on _which_ Sekirei makes up this "Disciplinary Squad" was given to Madoka before she was released into the city. Nor was any information on this enforcement group given to the Ashikabi during what we will laughably call the "briefing" by Hiroto Minaka after Madoka was winged, so how she or I are to recognize these Security assets and know to follow their orders is a mystery. Like much of what we've seen so far of MBI's information distribution to the Sekirei and, especially, to the Ashikabi, this lack of information about _who the enforcers actually are_ seems yet another clusterfuck of poor planning. If you have cops, the first rule is to make them identifiable AS COPS.  
MBI Security would be the primary users of MBI Intelligence data (though Operations Management would also likely use MBI Intelligence data significantly as well), especially in cases where Operations Management decides to sanction some rule-breaking activity by a Sekirei or Ashikabi. This element may also be responsible for dealing with keeping the Sekirei Plan secret by way of intercepting media and communications, though that could very well be a separate element.

* * *

Started Jan 13 2015  
Completed Jan 18 2015  
Final Edits Jun 9 2015  
Posted Jun 21 2015


	11. Bk4 - Ch2 Recovery

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 4.2 – Ch 11 Recovery

 _Author's Note: Yes, Madoka and Gregory are in a newly intimate relationship with each other. Yes, that means sex is on their minds a LOT. That is how people are in newly intimate relationships. This will not be the focus of every chapter from here on out, but it is something talked about quite a bit at first._  
 _There is also a plot relevant point to talking about Madoka's evolving views on sex…_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

One week and forty-three Norito's later Gregory was happily back at school teaching English. No longer did he hate every minute away from Madoka, but he was glad to return to her in the evenings. He was back to being figuratively, more than literally, madly in love with his beautiful Sekirei. He knew who she was and remembered everything about the last couple of months.

There was also no more repeat of the time he ran away screaming when she took off her shirt and exposed her tits. Nor was there any recurrence of the three straight hours of violent, animalistic, sex that had only ended when Gregory had finally suffered an acute myocardial infarction.

Which took yet _another_ Norito to fix.

Madoka now knew that kissing a man who was having a heart attack, in order to get her Norito to stop that heart attack, is not pleasant. Among a great deal of other new knowledge that she would just as soon have avoided learning over the last week.

Madoka wished she could edit her own memories as easily as she was able to soften Gregory's recollections of some of the more difficult spots. But, all's well that ends well, she told herself.

She _absolutely_ had a new appreciation for just how complex the human mind was, and a new respect for the Principle of Unintended Consequences. She also now had a fair bit of hard-earned experience with her healing ability, both the physical and the mental aspects of it.

" _Call it Redact, Madoka. You can't keep calling it your 'power', the term is Redact," s_ he scolded herself.

The day Gregory finally went to work with a smile on his face, returned to the loft with a passionate kiss for her, enjoyed dinner with her and a movie on the holo-tank, then made love to her, then got to sleep at a reasonable hour, all without any signs of the many troubles of the last week, she visited the Buddhist Shrine that she and Gregory had gone to on New Year's Eve. There, she left a significant cash offering to whatever gods there might be, in thanks that she had eventually been able to set things right.

Then she visited the Catholic Church the O'Donnell's worshiped at and donated another heaping handful of thousand-yen notes.

She _never_ wanted to go through anything like the last week _ever_ again!

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Thursday, 13 February 2020  
Ebisu neighborhood, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

Relaxing on the couch at the loft, Gregory was reading over a checklist in the Notebook while Madoka leaned against his side, watching a movie on the holo-tank.

He had been working at this list for the last couple of weeks. At least, the parts of the last couple of weeks he could remember clearly. He trusted Madoka to take care of him, more so now than ever before actually, so he was not going to fret about the fuzzy spots in his recent memory.

The parts he could remember were bad enough.

The checklist was primarily security concerns he and Madoka had already addressed, most of them items that came up as a result of now having a second residence and safe "burner" phones to use.

They now had multiple pseudonymous GPS service accounts with an easy way to make new ones, as many as they needed, any time they changed to new safe-phones. So even if they were only carrying their safe-phones they could easily track each other's location. Gregory had set them up with historical tracking of their GPS locations as well so they could not only find where the other was but where they had been and when.

Gregory had set up anonymous cloud storage accounts by the dozens and had programmed both phones to constantly record everything the audio sensors captured, whether it was the mic on the phone, the wireless jaw mics they used, or the tiny mics that were on the outside of the wireless earbuds. The audio immediately streamed to cloud storage, so at any point he could check on what was being heard around Madoka.

He felt incredibly creepy for coming up with that one, but once he explained to Madoka why he thought it was a good idea, she agreed completely. She hadn't even _initially_ reacted as though it were creepy, in yet another rather stark example of how Madoka was _not_ the typical young woman. He could not imagine what his daughter Mishi would have said if he proposed such a thing for _her_ phone.

"Creeper" would be the _least_ of her accusations.

He had still rather insistently explained to Madoka why he thought this was needed. If she disappeared, perhaps having been attacked and terminated and then recovered by MBI, at least this way Gregory could review the audio log and know what had happened. With GPS tagging he also would know when and where everything in the audio log occurred.

Perhaps it was cold comfort, but anything would be better than the likely fate for most Ashikabi's, where they saw their Sekirei head to the store for some food and then the Sekirei disappear without a trace. Then the Ashikabi would never know their Sekirei's fate, because MBI certainly felt no obligation to notify an Ashikabi that he was no longer an Ashikabi. They didn't give new Ashikabi's an 800 number to call with questions or to make inquiries, that's for sure.

MBI certainly didn't provide anything like Sekirei dot com slash mysekireistatus.

In addition, such audio recordings would give them opportunity to review in greater detail any new encounters such as the one Madoka had experienced with 16 Toyotama.

To make himself feel better about the niggling creep factor that was still bothering him, Gregory set up the exact same monitoring and recording on his own phones, both his regular phone and his safe phones. He then made sure Madoka had access to _that_ cloud storage and could easily pull up the audio logs and the cross referenced GPS historical data and that she could review them from any of her phones or her tablet.

That helped ease his conscience, a bit. Still seemed creepy though.

He pushed that feeling away. This situation was really too important for non-productive sentiments, and his fear of seen as a middle-aged creeper-stalker was non-productive. Gregory was honest enough with himself to admit that Madoka wasn't the only one with stupid cultural hang-ups that needed to be ignored for the sake of practicality and security.

It sure was a lot easier to point them out in other people though.

Each of the safe-phones was set up to automatically upload everything from their camera as well, whether video or still shots. Gregory did the same with his cameras; the big Nikon v10 as well as the more snapshot appropriate Sony RX1000 that he carried everywhere.

If MBI or any other authority tried to take their cameras and destroy the internal memory, it would not do them any good. Some of the cloud storage accounts were with services in places like Beirut. Gregory would like to see MBI try to force access to those accounts.

They had purchased a hundred new pre-paid smart phones, with cash, making the salesman's day at the LG store in Ginza. Nice anonymous cellular and data traffic, identified to the networks only by hardware IDs and use-once account information from the data carrier. The prepaid phones were kept in a box near the stairway leading down to the exit from the loft. There was a large whiteboard mounted on the wall above the box, with a column for Gregory and a column for Madoka. Any time they felt they should change out an old safe-phone for a new one, whether the prepaid data and voice was out or if they even suspected the phone had been compromised, they could update the whiteboard with the new safe-phone's number so that the other person could update their own phone contact list.

Gregory added a few new items to the list in his hand, mostly concerning stocking the loft with more supplies. They'd found several of their favorite high-end restaurants had pre-packaged gourmet meals from their outstanding kitchens, so Gregory planned on filling the loft's freezer with boxes and boxes of these quick-microwave meals. They had tried a few already and they were _delicious_ , though _very_ expensive compared to regular frozen dinners or take-out.

But MBI was footing the bill so Gregory was amused at the expense more than concerned. So he added a line item to purchase 50 breakfast, 25 each of lunch, and dinner packages from the Ritz-Carlton's prepackaged café service, to be picked up by Gregory in person, not for delivery. It was 10 minutes to drive from here to the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo over in Minato Ward, 3.5 kilometers by car. Easy enough to just drive over there in the Jeep and load up at the restaurant's commercial door. The Ritz-Carlton serviced the American embassy with that line of prepared meals, among other high-end accounts, so they knew their business. All of the meals were western-style, so they were higher in calories, carbs, and fat, than Japanese style meals. And that was essential for keeping Madoka fed and healthy; his Sekirei could go through 5000 calories a day and it certainly didn't turn into fat!

Another line item added, to get a new freestanding freezer delivered to the storage rental a block from the loft. Pain in the ass that was, but it was better to hire random young men to carry a freezer a block to the loft's than to have an appliance company have the loft's address on file.

He hoped the precautions they were taking were good enough. But he had no way to really know. Not until it was too late. But that was the nature of defending yourself, wasn't it?

Gregory leaned a bit towards Madoka and kissed the top of her head on impulse. She turned to look up at him and smiled, then squeezed his hand, before returning her attention to the holo-tank and her movie. " _Jurassic World 3"_ he thought it was, vaguely remembering taking Karen and Mishi and Tomo to see it when it was released last summer.

She was certainly enjoying it, which brought a smile to Gregory's face. He made a mental note to try to spend less time in bed with Madoka and more time going out and doing things a young woman would enjoy doing. She seemed to be content with spending entire weekends doing nothing but eating takeout and screwing like rabbits, but there was more that Gregory wanted to show her of what life had to offer.

Especially if she really was destined to fall in MBI's insane Sekirei Plan.

A beep from his tablet got Gregory's attention. It looked like someone had posted something on the Sekirei and Ashikabi Google+ page. He tabbed over to the Google+ app and looked for the comment.

||76sAshikabi: I hate you so much; my Sekirei won't leave off about getting pictures taken like you have of your Sanjunana. Let's talk, eh? ;)

Gregory smiled and thought, " _Bingo, got one!"_ Now to see if he could set up a meeting somewhere public, maybe next week.

||37sAshikabi: Heh, I feel your pain friend. Let's have lunch, maybe a week from Saturday? You and your Sekirei and me and mine, and talk. No one is going to try anything funny in a restaurant, eh?

||76sAshikabi: Yeah, let's do that. I'll admit I was wondering about how to know for sure about meeting other people in this crazy game and being safe. Somewhere real public, that's a good idea. Are you anywhere near Nakano Ward?

||37sAshikabi: Yep, Shibuya Ward, so just south of there. So let's have lunch at one of the restaurants around Shinjuku Central Park. There's lots of good food places there and we can go to the park to take photos if your Sekirei likes the idea. Talk to her, and then let me know where for sure. We are looking forward to meeting you both.

||76sAshikabi: You want us to pick the place to eat? Okay, most restaurants in that part of town is a little out of my price range I'm not ashamed to say. I know; I work over there at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government complex.

||37sAshikabi: That's why my MBI card will be treating us. So pick out a place you two would like to try. I'm sure Sanjunana and I will enjoy it.

||76sAshikabi: Hah! Good point! Okay, I'll message you with a place next week.

Gregory closed the Google+ app on the tablet then asked Madoka, "Pause the movie for a minute, sweetheart?"

After she had done so, he said, "We need to plan exactly how we're going to approach other Ashikabi and Sekirei couples. What sort of things we will do to make sure it's not an ambush, what we can do to make sure they don't intend to betray us later, what phones we will carry, what cameras, what we will talk about, what we won't talk about. Everything."

She turned around on the couch to face him. "You mean our tactics. Since our strategy of meeting other Sekirei and Ashikabi couples in order to make friends and allies is beginning to bear fruit." Gregory nodded his agreement with her summary, happy that she remembered the terminology and was ready to think in the correct framework. She added, "I am guessing that someone has contacted us. Who is it?"

He grinned and nodded. "Yep! Number 76 and her Ashikabi. The four of us are going to have lunch somewhere public, not this coming weekend but the next, the 22nd."

Madoka considered that, her expression pensive. "I do not know anything about number 76. Yes, we do need to think about and plan our tactics for about exactly how we will go about such a meeting, in detail."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Saturday, February 15th 2020  
Muromachi District, Chou Ward, Shin Tokyo

Gregory leaned against the large windows of the room he and Madoka had rented for the weekend. As it was Valentine's Day weekend Gregory had felt they should go for the very best accommodations they could find in Shin Tokyo.

And the very best meant the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

Good enough for His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince Naruhito, and his wife, Her Imperial Highness the Crown Princess Masako, to call it their favorite hotel in all of Japan?

Then adequate for Valentine's Day for his beautiful Sekirei. If barely.

From the vantage of their room, high on the north west corner of the Mandarin Oriental's gleaming skyscraper, Gregory could see Mount Fuji to the west. In the late dim twilight the last bit of sun was illuminating the sacred peak with gold, in contrast to the deep purple and blue of the evening sky. Also to the west, but much closer, walking distance from the front doors of the Mandarin Oriental really, were the grounds of the Imperial Palace. He could see the simulated torchlight around what little remained of the Edo Castle from his vantage on the 38th floor, and the rest of nighttime downtown Shin Tokyo spread out around the hotel.

Yellow-lit ancient Japan alongside the most advanced technopolis in the world.

He and Mado had been greeted with champagne and strawberries on their arrival at their room and they had snacked on amazing sushi and fresh fruits from the hotel's welcome-bento-box. Last night they had enjoyed an eight-course dinner of the best Cantonese cuisine Gregory had ever experienced and tonight it was sushi at the hotel's acclaimed "Sushi SORA".

The Mandarin Oriental's portion of the weekend's bill, for just the room, was costing MBI ¥441,000, and that just made every moment of it that much sweeter.

" _Giving people an unlimited MBI card? What the fuck were they thinking? That we'd use it to buy rice at the market and splurge on meat once a week? Maybe we'd use it to pay rent on an old Inn room with a pushy landlady and where we would be thrashing the tatami with sticks once a week as part of our chores?"_

Really, it was to laugh.

He made a mental note to talk to Mister "76sAshikabi" next week at their lunch and make sure they knew how to best use their MBI card. Assuming the meeting went well, at least. The fellow hadn't immediately thought of using the MBI card for their lunch, so he was probably being paranoid yet stupid about the card. Maybe Gregory should write up a pamphlet for new Ashikabi's, "How to Rape your MBI Platinum Card for Fun and Profit!"

Gregory refocused his eyes to the reflection he cast in window, appreciating the black suit MBI had been kind enough to purchase for him to wear while taking his lovely Madoka for acclaimed sushi. Gregory was not sure what "trofeo wool" was or if the "Ermenegildo Zegna" designer label on the suit was impressive or not, but it sure as hell made for a comfortable suit and he had to confess he looked sharp in it. Did he care it cost MBI ¥300,000? Only inasmuch as it amused the hell out of him.

He looked at the reflection of the deluxe corner room behind him, the very comfortable king sized bed immaculately made in spite of how many times he and Mado had messed it up already, the soft ivory walls and rich brown carpets.

You could practically taste the _Inyodo_ , the Japanese version of Feng Shui.

Gregory wondered at what it was going to be like readjusting to the life of a schoolteacher, after all this was over. A month's rent on his family's spacious, by Japanese standards, apartment in the upscale Shibuya Ward was less than _half_ of what the room bill was for this weekend.

He watched the reflection of Madoka step out of the utterly decadent bathroom that their corner suite boasted. She was carrying her high heels in hand and approaching him in the blue dress she had bought Wednesday when he had taken her shopping. They lived in Shibuya, _the_ shopping and fashion center of Japan. They had fled from 86 Katsuragi down Omotesandō Avenue, where Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Dior had their flagship stores and retailers from Gucci to The Gap rented space by the square millimeter and were damn glad to get it. The street was called "Tokyo's Champs-Élysées" and there were many who considered the Omotesandō the better of the comparison.

And his Sekirei only knew it as the street they'd fled for their lives on? No, that could not stand.

Therefore, this time, instead of running for their lives down the Omotesandō in the Jeep, he took her shopping there. Well, Gregory escorted her and MBI took her shopping.

He let her pick out everything, including the black suit by Zegna that he was wearing tonight.

For her dress this evening, the Alexander McQueen fashion house appreciated MBI's patronage.

Gregory admitted he didn't know couture from coat rack, but he had to acknowledge that the blue silk dress Madoka had picked out for herself looked entirely divine on her.

Then, she could make cardboard look divine.

"Zip me up, Gregory-kun?"

He turned away from the window and the darkening view of Mount Fuji and smiled down at his Sekirei. "Of course, Mado-chan. And when we return from dinner let's have more of the chocolates you gave me for Valentine's?"

Gregory zipped up her dress for her, and he could make out her pleased smile as she held up her cascade of blonde hair and turned her head slightly to glance back at him.

She moved to lean against the window, striking a bit of a pose for him to admire her dress. "What do you think, Gregory-kun?"

"Mado-chan, that is possibly the most beautiful dress I've ever seen."

She smiled happily at that.

"And for the crime against God and Nature of covering up your divine body, it should be shredded and burned and the ashes scattered, as a warning to any other clothing which dared consider hiding you from my eyes."

She was still laughing at that as the elevator doors closed behind them, whisking them away to their dinner reservations.

"You goof. I love you, Gregory-kun."

"And I love you, Mado-chan."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Monday, Feb 17th 2020  
Yoyogi District, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

Gregory and Madoka had intended to make a point of spending at least some weeknights at the O'Donnell apartment but that fell through quickly. They ended up staying at the safe house exclusively for almost a month straight after Madoka and her Ashikabi finally became lovers.

Sure, Madoka visited the apartment by bicycle, to pick up the MBI Platinum Card to hit the ATM's. And Gregory dropped by to grab a change of clothes and leave the Jeep parked while he then took the train to the Ebisu neighborhood the safe house was in. But those quick drop-in-and-go visits weren't adequate for actual housekeeping.

So, the first time the two visited the apartment, with the intention of inspecting the place after almost a month of staying at the loft, was a minor disaster.

One cannot just leave for a month and expect the garbage in the bin or the food in the refrigerator or the inevitable can of soda left in the teenager's bedroom to not evolve into a hostile life form.

They also held a somber toilet-based funeral for Mishi's goldfish. Madoka felt badly for forgetting Mishi's little fish tank and she struggled with how she felt about the deaths of the two fish. She realized she had never known anything or anyone to die, and this was even her fault, in a roundabout way.

It was a very unpleasant feeling.

Gregory was quiet and withdrawn for a while after they disposed of the goldfish. Madoka knew there was little she could do for him when he fell into thoughts of his daughter.

Gregory told her, "I bought those for her, she promised to take good care of them and she did. It was the first time I'd seen her be responsible for something other than just herself."

He was even more depressed after he wrote Mishi an email explaining that her fish had died. Madoka pleaded with him to just not tell her; surely Mishi would not find out otherwise. Gregory insisted it was the right thing to do, even though he knew Mishi would write back with even more anger at him than she had already displayed.

Madoka could only wish her Ashikabi was not hurting, but she could not and should not heal this injury to his spirit. He loved his daughter almost to the point of unreason and had focused a great deal of his self-image on being "Mishi's Dad", even more than of being "Karen's Husband" or an "English Teacher in High School". Madoka found Gregory's emotional distance from his son, Mark, confusing, but she left that issue alone. She didn't know Mark O'Donnell so he did not really matter to her. But she knew Mishi.

Unlike Gregory's casual acceptance of his son's absence, the loss of Mishi in his life was an open psychological wound that Madoka had _seen_ in his mind and she no longer had the hubris to think she could, or even should, fix it. It would heal by itself over time and meanwhile there would be these periods where Gregory hurt for his losses.

They spent the first night cleaning and throwing out spoiled foodstuffs. They were both tired enough that Gregory's insistence that they not sleep together in the master bedroom was no real problem. Madoka collapsed onto the slightly musty sheets and blanket of Mishi's bed and was out like a light until she was woken by the sounds of Gregory leaving for work in the morning.

Madoka only lounged in bed for a short time after Gregory left. After spending so much time at their safe house, she was no longer comfortable in Mishi's bed, or Mishi's bedroom. She showered, dressed, and then reviewed her to-do list as well as checked her phone for messages from Gregory about anything he needed her to do today.

One nice thing about being at the apartment was being able to use her Christmas present Samsung phone. _And_ it was really nice not having to worry about whether it was okay to use the MBI Platinum Card for concern about tipping off their assumed watchers to Gregory and Madoka's efforts at misleading MBI Intelligence. She and Gregory had to carefully plan for when they were going to use the MBI Card; using the card required them to start from the O'Donnell apartment with their "unsafe" phones in their possession and then return to the O'Donnell apartment. What location MBI logged their "unsafe" phones at was something both of them had to keep in mind at all times, especially when it came to using the card. Use the card while MBI thought Gregory and Madoka were still at the O'Donnell apartment, because their phones were registered as being at that location? Then, no doubt, red flags would pop up in MBI Intelligence's systems, letting the monitors know that Gregory and/or Madoka went shopping and left their phones at the apartment, which was something they did _not_ want MBI considering. They wanted MBI to believe that Gregory and Madoka, like everyone else in Shin Tokyo, took their phones everywhere and that MBI could depend on the information phone GPS tracking gave them.

This complicated everything they needed to do with the MBI Platinum card, from buying assets such as the pre-paid burner phones to the withdrawal of cash from the ATM's daily. Living full time at the safe house, which had not been the plan when they'd rented it, was becoming something of a security-pain-in-the-ass. Gregory was making noises about renting another location in the city to be a real safe house, at a location neither of them visited except when absolutely necessary so that MBI Intelligence (and whoever had compromised MBI Intelligence's systems, like 22 Kochou on behalf of Higa Izumi) had less a chance of knowing about the place. Madoka was already very much in favor of that plan and just letting MBI Intelligence find out about the Ebisu neighborhood loft.

Gregory had been rather put out with himself for missing the problem with the MBI Card and the phones. Madoka was the one who had spotted the problem and pointed it out to Gregory just before he was about to use the MBI Platinum Card to make a purchase while the unsecure phones were still logged at the O'Donnell apartment.

He used that as proof of how her opinions and thoughts about security procedures were just as valid as his own were, a point that she had been arguing against, mildly, up until that incident. Now she believed him; he really was capable of screwing up due to not thinking about something! Now she felt a little silly for thinking Gregory was immune to making mistakes, even making the occasional boneheaded mistake, which could screw up their entire security situation. He was no more perfect than anyone else, Ashikabi or no.

She loved him _more_ now, for his imperfections. And she understood that it was both of their jobs to watch out for their security, to cover for each other's blind spots and mistakes.

Going over her list while sipping fresh brewed coffee at the breakfast table, Madoka recognized that she did not really have enough to keep her busy. Looking around the apartment, she did not feel the same interest in cleaning and maintaining that she did at the safe house loft. The O'Donnell apartment had been cleaned enough that it could now be left for weeks and not become a health hazard; that was good enough as far as Madoka was concerned.

She should check the social media pages for any Ashikabi or Sekirei trying to contact them. They were supposed to meet with 76 Midorino and her Ashikabi this coming weekend, and Madoka wanted to at least text with the other Sekirei a little before they all met in person.

There was also her Reading List, if she got bored.

Her Reading List was a file that she had been adding to on Gregory's suggestion. A list of subjects that she found she needed more education about, things they did not teach adequately in the MBI Sekirei Labs, or never even touched on in many cases.

For example, none of the administrators or scientists had ever bothered showing the girls in Group 11 how to properly wear makeup. Or shown them the proper technique for deep-throating cock. There were also entries on her Reading List for Human Anatomy and Physiology; she had a dozen subjects under that heading to read on. She had recently added psychology and psychotherapy subjects. Madoka had to confess, at least to herself, that the science subjects kept getting pushed further and further down her Reading List in favor of more entertaining material. She couldn't help it if anatomy and psychology were more boring than sex or fashion, especially if Gregory wasn't working on the study with her. He had a way of making learning even boring material easier, more fun.

Pouring herself more coffee, Madoka thought about the last study session she and Gregory had on the subject of anatomy and her ability to heal, or harm, as the situation required.

As far as she and Gregory could tell, what she could do, what her Sekirei gifts were, would not be much of a factor in a one-on-one formalized duel to the death. Not when her likely opponents were all much stronger, tougher, and faster, than she was. But there was more to life, more to safety and security for that matter, than being good at combat within the Sekirei Plan's rigid fighting rules.

Gregory had pointed out that she had allowed MBI and Hiroto Minaka's lunacy define her self-worth. Then her Ashikabi had taken great pains to explain just how useful, valuable, and powerful she could be.

Gregory had found it funny that the most effective illustration of her potential had been via his computer game, the one he played online. Just one hour of demonstrating in " _World of Guildwars III_ " what the party healer meant to the survivability of a group did wonders for chipping away at her years of Madoka's self-doubt and poor self-esteem.

And it was Gregory who had pointed out what she had done in her panic and fear, when Toyotama had her on the roof, when she used her Redaction to break Toyotama's arm.

After she had finally told Gregory the whole story of the ambush by Toyotama, they went through the encounter in as much detail as she could remember, over and over, while he took notes. Gregory pointed out to her that she had broken a very strong bone in Toyotama's forearm clean in half just by willing it to break. A fact she had managed to forget in the chaos of what had happened on that rooftop.

He then pulled up an entire page of information on her tablet about "mechanics of materials" so she could understand how strong that bone is and how difficult it is to cause it to break, especially to cause the bone to fail spectacularly enough to cause an audible bang of the sort Madoka remembered.

He suggested that if she ever found herself in that situation again that she should try breaking her attacker's skull instead of their arm. If she couldn't break their skull easily then she should try just breaking their brain.

That suggestion confused Madoka until Gregory explained that attacking the skull is only necessary if you have to physically penetrate the skull to get to what is important: the brain. Surgeons had to make a hole in the body in order to reach inside and affect the body's internal structures. Bullets had to make holes in the skull in order to to get to the important, vulnerable, brain within. But Madoka's Redaction metafunction didn't work like surgery; she could reach inside the body without making holes first.

If she could heal wounds that were still covered by skin, muscle, and even bone then it followed that Redaction could likely _cause_ injuries to bodily locations still covered by skin, muscle, and bone.

Bodily locations like the cavity in the skull where the brain is located.

Gregory was resolute, ruthless, and bloody-minded about the defense of his Sekirei. They spent an entire evening at the loft using their huge three-meter holo-tank to pull up high resolution 3-D images of the human skull, brain, and spine. Gregory pointed out where the smallest effort would result in the maximum carnage.

He worked hand in hand with her, both of them learning everything they could (in one evening) about things like what a cerebral infarction was. They read together about subarachnoid hemorrhage and they discussed how the "thunderclap headache", which was the most common _immediate_ effect of a subarachnoid hemorrhage, would instantly disable most anyone. And it was the _immediate_ symptoms that they were most interested in.

Waiting five minutes for someone's heart to stop beating due to a myocardial infarction just wasn't a practical self-defense plan.

But a thunderclap headache, violent seizures, projectile vomiting, and loss of consciousness, striking within seconds, due to a subarachnoid hemorrhage?

"That sounds awesome!" Madoka was later a little abashed at how eager she'd sounded.

They read about how to locate the Willis Circle arteries in the brain that, if ruptured, would cause an immediate subarachnoid hemorrhage. They picked this particular form of brain damage to study because the Willis Circle arteries were relatively easy to locate in the brain for a novice who had her own built in CT Scan. She could now locate, after some practice on Gregory, the Willis Circle in less than 10 seconds with her Healing Probe. If she could get physical contact with someone else for more than 10 seconds she would try to locate those arteries in them, for practice, of course. So far she'd not had the opportunity to put her hands on someone else for that long, only Gregory.

How long it took, after locating her target, to cause a catastrophic rupture in the arteries depended on several factors, including how brittle the subjects arteries were, whether there was a convenient already-existing cerebral aneurysm just waiting to be popped, and probably a dozen other factors she wasn't aware of yet.

But she at least had a _plan_ for the next time some gang of street thugs tried to rape her.

Evenings spent studying the vulnerabilities of the human body, and specifically the horrors that could be inflicted on the brain if someone could just reach in past the skull, was not what most girls would consider romantic. But the hours Gregory spent with her on their Brain Damage project warmed her heart like nothing she had ever imagined in her adolescent years in which she'd fantasized about what having the love of her Ashikabi would be like.

Anyone could buy their girlfriend flowers. It was _real_ love if they helped their girlfriend learn how to commit bloody carnage.

She and Gregory were honest with each other, though, about the untested nature of this self-defense plan. She might find it impossible to carry it out in a crisis for any number of reasons that they could not foresee. Breaking Toyotama's radius bone in her forearm had been done in a blind panic, an instinctive effort fueled by desperation and utter terror. Maybe that was the only circumstance in which she could strike out with her Redaction.

But at least the plan was _something._ She no longer thought of herself as someone who's fate was to always be the victim, who had no way to fight back against those who would hurt her.

Stepping out onto the O'Donnell's apartment patio and enjoying the morning sun in spite of the cold February temperatures, Madoka took a cigarette out of the spare pack that Gregory kept at the apartment and lit it. Last week while at the safe house she'd been curious about what Gregory got out of the habit enough to try it herself, and she'd learned she liked the menthol cigarettes that he smoked.

Sitting at the patio table with her coffee and Gregory's cigarettes, she looked at her Reading List. There were subjects that interested her more than anatomy and physiology, subjects she _wanted_ to learn more about. Fashion was a good example. Casual, formal, business; she had realized when shopping at Gucci and Prada on the Omotesandō for their Valentine's weekend that there was a vast amount to know about clothes and accessories. Did anyone at MBI even _try_ to educate the female Sekirei about such an important subject? Of course not! It didn't have anything to do with beating someone to death so it was worthless!

"Assholes." she groused, under her breath. Madoka did not think much about how far her attitude towards MBI and the Sekirei Plan had shifted in the two months since she'd become Gregory's Sekirei. Disillusionment with their methods and priorities had accumulated until she had no choice but to agree with Gregory's highly negative view of MBI, Hiroto Minaka, and even the Sekirei Plan itself.

She also needed to update her "Feelings About Stuff" journal. She'd spent half a day in the week leading up to Valentine's Day just catching up on that. There had been a lot she'd had to write, considering she hadn't touched it since before she and Gregory became lovers. She filled many pages chronicling her sexual experiences with Gregory over the previous two weeks, and she described in detail what it was like splitting her awareness between her own sensorium and Gregory's while they had sex.

She _still_ had not told Gregory that she did that, that she could split her awareness equally between her own body and his, while they had sex. She kept meaning to, but the time never seemed quite right.

She took the time now to tap out a new entry in her "Feelings About Stuff" journal, writing at length and with great passion about how incredible _that girl_ looked, felt, sounded, tasted. She was afraid if she said something about it to Gregory that it might jinx the entire thing. She subconsciously resisted taking _any_ action that might cut into her _incredible-sex-with-that-girl_ time.

Taking a draw of cool tobacco smoke then slowly exhaling it, Madoka acquired a vague, distant, expression as she allowed herself to wallow in memories of how marvelous it was to have sex with _that girl._

Shaking her head to clear it, she realized she could keep busy today with no trouble. First thing on her list was the daily cash run to the post-office ATM's, then Gregory had left her a note to purchase something called an Emergency Services Scanner. He mentioned in that note that she would likely need to purchase it at a specialty business, check The Google.

She knew how to use The Google now! And The Wikipedia! The two most important websites in the world as far as she was concerned.

" _Stupid MBI and their treating us Sekirei like mushrooms_." The longer she lived out in the real world the more angry she got at MBI.

So, find a store nearby that sells these Emergency Service Scanners, then head out!

Well… maybe after relieving some tension in the shower first. Her thoughts of making love to _that girl_ were lingering and distracting her. She'd noticed she needed to masturbate more often recently; not only more often but it was also a _lot better_ now than her attempts at self-gratification were back in the MBI Sekirei Labs. Maybe because she felt safer now that she wasn't being watched by cameras and monitors day and night? Madoka did not know. But now hardly a day could go by without her getting so horny but she _had_ to take care of herself at least once, and often more than once, culminating in body-shaking and mind-blanking orgasms the likes of which she had _never_ found possible during her furtive adolescent explorations under the blanket at night in the dorms.

Wasn't it only a few weeks ago that she had felt like her own efforts at self-gratification were too much work for not enough payoff? Madoka pulled up the encrypted journal app on her phone and flipped through her recent entries. Yes, there, January 18th. "Singularly unsatisfying" among other negative descriptions. What had changed in that one month? Was it just that she and Gregory were lovers now and that made her enjoy solo sex more too? She certainly enjoyed it now and felt driven to do it often!

Gregory liked it when she masturbated, too. She hadn't thought of herself as reserved or passive when she and Gregory had sex, but in retrospect she had to admit that for the first few weeks of their lovemaking she had been too overwhelmed with being in Gregory's skin and in his head while simply fucking _that girl_ cross-eyed to do much; she really just rather went along for the ride.

Madoka so _loved_ fucking _that girl_.

But recently things changed, all because one time when she'd "given herself a hand" while they were having sex, during one of those rare moments where she had gotten carried away in what her own body was feeling while Gregory was thrusting into her from behind. Generally, she could not tear much of her attention away from what _he_ was experiencing, especially when he took her from behind like that. But on that one occasion her own body had flashed hot with a bit of the same fire she was used to only feeling in Gregory and all without really thinking about it she'd reached down to rub at her clit while Gregory kept plunging into her.

That was the closest she had managed, so far, in her quest to experience her own orgasm and his at the same exact time. _That_ time her own went off, harder than ever before in her life, then she had Gregory's following right as her own was fading, all in all resulting in a mind-numbing two solid minutes of orgasm for her.

She'd actually lost consciousness. It was _that_ overwhelming. She supposed that even her Sekirei body was not built for that much ecstasy. Maybe she could work up her tolerance?

She grinned wickedly at that idea.

Gregory admitted that he had found it extremely hot that she'd gotten into it enough to take action in giving herself pleasure. He'd then shown her just how erotic he thought it was. Several times in a row, in fact. Then watching herself masturbate through Gregory's senses, while he was doing the same for himself, where she could feel everything her body felt _and_ everything his body felt? Where she was turned on by her own horniness _and_ his? It was like a positive feedback loop of fapping frenzy. _That girl_ making _those_ noises, with _that_ dirty expression on her beautiful face… Just the memories made Madoka's blood boil with desire, more so than anything else she had experienced so far in her rapidly broadening sexual experience.

The memory had Madoka _running_ to the apartment's shower, throwing her clothes off as she went. Enough time to go to the ATM and buy a radio later!

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

That night Gregory picked up take-out Chinese on the way home from work. He had not considered that it might feel awkward having take-out around the O'Donnell's kitchen table without the rest of his family present. Nor had he anticipated that he and Madoka might both be reminded of the last time they ate Chinese take-out there, and Karen's storming away from the table.

In retrospect, that had been behavior from Karen that should have been a warning flag to Gregory but he had been too wrapped up in his own concerns and the then-newly-revealed Sekirei Plan, as well as his new bond with Madoka, to think about it clearly.

At the time, he just wrote it off as Karen being more bitchy than usual. And his willingness to believe his wife was more bitchy "than usual" was not a particularly happy statement about the state of his marriage even at that point.

As the two sat and picked at their sweet and sour chicken with their chopsticks there was not much talk. Finally, Gregory sighed and apologized, "I'm sorry, Mado-chan. I should have picked up something else. Wasn't really thinking."

"Neh, it is okay, Gregory-kun. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe it has been two months since we sat here with Karen-san and Mishi-chan that night. I do not know if I expected then to even still be alive in the middle of February."

Gregory nodded, chewing his mandarin beef absently. As he attempted to pick up something approaching a forkful of rice in his chopsticks, he shook his head and observed, "It seems like so much has happened in the last two months. Certainly, a lot has changed. I don't recognize hardly any part of my life anymore from then."

Glancing over at Madoka, who was staring down at her plate with her hair falling down around her face, Gregory hurriedly added, "And it has changed for the better, Mado-chan. I can't deny I'm sad about Karen and Mishi and my son and the rest of my family in the States. But I'd not go back and change things, even if I could. I count myself a very lucky man being your Ashikabi and an even luckier man being your lover. Lucky beyond what I deserve."

She looked up at that, eyes glittering, and she smiled. "Thank you Gregory-kun. I am very glad that things have worked out as they have, as well."

"Okay, good, then. We're both happy!" Gregory tried grinning across the table, mocking the gloomy atmosphere they had both been wallowing in. That got a genuine giggle from Madoka at least.

In a deliberate attempt to change the mood, he asked, "So, did you find a scanner today?"

Madoka sat up and did her best to shake off the negative mood. She nodded and answered, "Yes, actually. You were right, they are somewhat difficult to find, but there is a store that sells all sorts of radios within walking distance of the Shin-Okubo station."

"Shin-Okubo? That's a couple of stops north on the Yamanote Line?"

Nodding her head, Madoka said, "Yes, not far really, but since we are near the apartment instead of the safe-house I used the MBI card to make the purchase instead of our cash. That was the right thing to do, yes? She expertly grabbed another piece of chicken with her chopsticks.

Gregory considered himself competent with chopsticks, though it took a lot of effort to get to that point, considering he was raised in that third of the world that used forks and spoons for moving food to the mouth. But Madoka was as fast and deft with chopsticks as anyone he'd ever seen. He was a bit envious of her skill, actually.

"Yes, using the card was the right call, certainly. I know you've got the security processes down, you don't need to report to me when you use the card, Mado-chan."

After she swallowed her bite of chicken she replied, "I just do not want to make a stupid error."

"Eh, Mado-chan, don't worry about it so much. Like I said, you've got down everything we've talked about when it comes to keeping out of MBI's view, probably better than I do. Now, since you used the card directly, did you get the best model they had?"

"Two!"

"Good girl!"

"Oh, Gregory-kun, that reminds me, the safe is getting too full. We need to come up with somewhere else to stash some of our emergency cash fund. It's over ¥30,000,000 now and the safe is overflowing every time I open it."

Gregory laughed, "Well, what a terrible problem to have. Thanks for letting me know, I'll think about it. Maybe a pre-paid train station storage locker and a thick-canvas tote bag…"

After clearing away the remnants of dinner, Gregory had her retrieve the scanners and the two of them sat on the couch in the living room and started reading through the instructions and fiddling with one of the surprisingly complex devices. Gregory shook his head in amazement, "In the States this thing wouldn't have ten percent this much gadgetry. If we can figure out how to set it up just right, I'll bet it will do the job perfectly."

"What is it we are trying to make it do, exactly, Gregory-kun?" Madoka had the instructional video for the scanner's set-up playing on her phone but paused it. "I have been curious as to why we needed such a thing."

"I didn't say before? Huh. Well, Mado-chan, don't just be curious, it's okay to ask. I'm sorry, I thought we'd talked about it. My idea was that it would be useful if we could find ways for you to get more hands on practice with the physical injury healing part of your Redaction metafaculty. Unfortunately, we can't just stake out hospital emergency rooms for people coming in with trauma injuries. And I'm not pulling muscles as often as I was, plus that doesn't get you any experience with trauma injuries. I thought perhaps we might acquire a lot of lab rats, there is a place that sells them, and other animals approved for scientific research, and you could practice on those."

"That sounds like a good idea, Gregory-kun. Are rats close enough to people for the practice to help?"

He nodded, "Yes, close enough for this sort of work. A broken bone is a broken bone, a stab wound a stab wound, and so on."

Madoka asked, "Then why the scanner?"

Gregory sat the complex black device down on the coffee table and shrugged, "Well… I realized I probably couldn't stab and beat helpless rats so that you would have injuries on them to heal."

She covered her mouth with a hand and just said, "Oh."

"Yeah. And I figured that probably wasn't something you would want to do either."

She shook her head vigorously.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, instead, I wondered if there was any other way for us to find subjects who were already badly injured, so we wouldn't have to do it to them ourselves. And, well, there are a lot of vehicle accidents, even these days when many of the highways are auto-pilot controlled." Gregory tapped the scanner on the coffee table. "As soon as a car accident happens, a broadcast goes out on the emergency service bands, with all sorts of codes to specify what sort of accident happened, what injuries may be present, all to summon police and fire and the appropriate ambulance services to the scene."

Madoka furrowed her brow then said, "So car crashes? And people are badly injured so if one happened near where we happened to be and we could get to it before the authorities then I could try to help?"

"Exactly Mado-chan. And with all the bells and whistles this scanner has we can set it for a specific area or for a roving area around the gps locator in the device. We can also set filters so only certain types of alerts will come to us. So we could tell it to only notify us if there's an accident within 100 meters of our location and involves serious injury. We don't want to run half a kilometer and realize the accident only dented the bumpers on two cars."

"Great, Gregory-kun, that sounds like a plan!"

"Well, there are a few things about it I'm unsure of."

Madoka set her phone down and headed to the kitchen for a fresh can of tea. She called over her shoulder, "Like what?"

"Primarily, I don't want you to have to see car wrecks that have injuries involved. It's pretty terrible, Mado-chan. Most people never see what thousands of pounds of steel and glass moving at speed can do to a human body and that's a good thing, otherwise we'd all be too terrified to ever use our cars."

Madoka returned and sat next to him on the couch and said, "Oh. Yes. I can imagine that could be very bad."

"Yeah. Very bad. Worse than whatever you're imagining, quite likely. I hate the idea of you seeing something that will give you nightmares for the rest of your life. For that matter, I don't much like the idea of myself seeing the aftermath of a fatality accident either. It's not like I've ever worked as a paramedic and hardened myself to the sight of people's mutilated bodies. I'm an English Teacher at a High School. I've only had to harden myself to the sight of social mutilation of teenagers by other teenagers. And the horrors of improperly diagrammed sentences."

Madoka seemed to appreciate his effort at levity. She gestured to the scanner, which now seemed somehow more threatening now than it had earlier, "Then why…"

Gregory picked up the printed manual for the scanner again and opened it to the programming section before answering. "Because as much as I'd prefer to spare you this, it's needed. And because I can't think of any other way for you to get practice. You _do_ need it; it could be the difference of life and death for me or for you. If we can ever find other Ashikabi and Sekirei to ally with then you healing their injuries would be the primary contribution we would be making to the group. And if all you can do is heal cuts or bruises, or use the huge energy sink of a Norito, it will be more difficult for all of us. Remember how awesome our World of Guildwars III party was when the party healer was kicking ass? And how very not-awesome it was to try the same fight _without_ the healer? That's us, if we can find allies and friends. You, actually. The healer."

"Oh. I did not think of it that way." Madoka pulled her legs up on the couch and hugged them to her chest. She was quiet for several minutes while Gregory continued reading, then she put a hand on Gregory's arm to get his attention.

"Gregory-kun, I too would rather not see people horribly hurt. But I will do it, so that I can learn. There is a lot we do not know, especially about the limits of my healing Redaction, but I think you have the right idea, the only way to find out is to use it and that means finding injured people. I would rather fail the first time trying to heal a wound with a stranger in a car crash than it be you, or Yosuga-chan, if we ever find her."

Gregory smiled at his Sekirei, putting his hand over hers and squeezing gently. "That's very brave, Mado-chan, and I respect the hell out of you for having the courage to do something like this."

Madoka returned his smile and nodded, now set on this course. "Okay, so let us get to programming this thing so we can find people to help, Gregory-kun!"

"One more thing we need to start researching is how long your Norito charge lasts. Tragically, this means we're going to have to do a lot of kissing, but we need to start checking to see if you can tell when it wears off, if it wears off all at once or gradually, how long it takes to wear off to the point you can't use your chant, everything we can measure about it."

His Sekirei squealed in mock fear. "Oh noes! This is your devious plan to capture my maiden lips! I knew it, you fiend!" Madoka scooted away from him on the couch, her face an almost perfect picture of a terrorized young woman.

Gregory watched her out of the corner of his eye and snorted scornfully. "Mado dear, your lips haven't been _anyone's_ definition of 'maiden' since about ten minutes after you took off all your clothes and jumped on me the day number 16 ambushed you."

The thrown pillow from the other end of the couch hit him in the side of the head _much_ harder than he had expected. Much like Madoka's shriek of outrage was louder than he had expected.

As Gregory fell off the couch with his offended Sekirei slapping at his arms he couldn't help but grin. _"Heh. Point to me."_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 _ **Terminology**_

 **Wing Flare** – The flare of metapsychic power which appears high on the back of a Sekirei when their Ashikabi kisses (or otherwise exchanges bodily fluids, see below) them. Wing Flare occurs at the moment of the Wing Bond being established and it occurs any time after that point when the Sekirei and Ashikabi kiss (assuming the Sekirei isn't already in a Norito Boost state, see below). The duration of the Wing Flare event is 10 seconds (in testing with 37 Madoka only, other Sekirei and Ashikabi may have varying durations of Wing Flare).

 **Wing Bonding** – When an "unwinged" Sekirei kisses (or otherwise shares bodily fluids with, see below) a metapsychically latent (or possibly even metapsychically operant) Terran human the two will establish a metapsychic bond. This bond establishes the Sekirei as subject to her new Ashikabi (the term for the latent metapsychic Terran human in the new relationship). This bond is supposedly unbreakable, the Sekirei by tradition will welcome their new state with some statement including the words "forever and ever" and it appears this is literal. The Sekirei will manifest a sort of tattoo on their upper back, across their shoulders, of the Sekirei Symbol (see earlier entry on the Sekirei Symbol) once they are "winged".

 **Norito Boost State** – The condition of having "extra" temporary metapsychic strength due to a Sekirei's Ashikabi having recently kissed him/her. A Wing Flare event indicates the beginning of the Norito Boost State.

 **Norito Burst** – A special, one-shot, manifestation of a Sekirei's metapsychic powers only accessible to a Sekirei who is in a Norito Boost state. Using the Norito Burst reduces the Sekirei to their normal non-boosted state immediately.

 **Norito Termination** – A Winged and Bonded Sekirei can supposedly be terminated if another Sekirei touches the Sekirei Crest of the target and the attacker recites her own Norito.  
Why this would terminate a Sekirei (or even if this rumored method of termination is legitimate) and through what mechanism is completely unknown at this time.

 _ **Sekirei**_

 ** _Norito Boost State and the Norito Burst_**

There are three separate yet related, phenomenon called "norito" by the Sekirei; the Norito State, the Norito Burst, and the Norito Termination.  
The Japanese definition of the word "norito" is a Shinto prayer that is addressed by worshipers to a deity. 37 Madoka reports there was no religious indoctrination in the MBI Sekirei Labs for the Sekirei raised there; they were informed of the major religions of Japan and educated in the basics of what those religions believed but there was no context given for the Sekirei to understand what religion was or why it was important (or unimportant). Therefore, the origin of the word "norito" for an expression of metapsychic power from a Winged Sekirei is unknown, though likely the word was coined by a researcher in the MBI Sekirei Labs who was familiar with the Shinto concept.  
Regardless of the Sekirei's lack of religion and the possible origins of the word, "norito" is universally agreed among the Sekirei to be the word for this important metapsychic phenomenon.  
In Shinto, the various prayers referred to as "norito" are founded on the concept of _koto-dama_ , the idea that spiritual power resides in words. According to the ancient belief of _koto-dama_ beautiful, correct, words bring about good, whereas ugly, coarse, language can cause evil. Thus, "norito" prayers in Shinto are always expressed in elegant, classical, language.  
As a teacher of languages, I admit I am tempted to incorporate this concept into my lesson plans. Good language causes good events! Bad language causes bad events!  
For the Sekirei, only the Norito Burst (see below) and the Norito Termination require the recital of words. The Norito Boost State (see below) occurs without any verbal cues.

 **Norito Boost State** : When an Ashikabi kisses their Sekirei (after the initial Wing Bonding Kiss) or otherwise the Sekirei takes in bodily fluids from their bonded Ashikabi (so far, as of 16 Feb 2020, kissing/saliva, fellatio/semen, and vaginal sex/semen, have all been confirmed as functional activators for the Norito state) the Sekirei manifests a Wing Flare. Once the psychic Wing Flare has receded the Sekirei is then in a state of higher metapsychic strength, a state we will refer to as their **Norito Boost State**. The degree of increase in metapsychic strength is difficult to determine at this stage as 37 Madoka has a much more difficult time using her Farsight+Redaction to gauge her own strength than in how well she can judge it in others. She says the increase in strength is noticeable, she feels conspicuously, remarkably, stronger. The Sekirei may then continue to operate with her normal metapsychic powers but with this across-the-board power boost of the Norito Boost State.  
Tests with Madoka have shown that the Norito Boost State remains in place for exactly 1 hour from the time of the Wing Flare that initiated it. Whether the Sekirei uses their metapsychic powers a lot, not at all, or only a small amount, during this hour has no effect on the duration of the Norito Boost State. It lasts for one hour, every time, unless the Sekirei uses the second phenomenon, the Norito Burst, in which case the Norito Boost State is immediately forfeited.

 **Norito Burst** : Norito also refers to a strong expression of the Sekirei's metapsychic powers in a single burst. This is supposed to be (according to the stories and myths the Sekirei heard growing up) some sort of major attack (or other expression of their powers if a non-combat Sekirei like Madoka), called into play by the Sekirei reciting a chant or prayer of two lines, in a formal or classical form. Examples that Madoka could come up with were a javelin wielder might pull off a piercing stab capable of punching hole through steel plate or a fist fighter might do a combination of punches that would expect to defeat even the toughest foe if they all land. These attacks are more than mere katas or combos though; they are supposedly an expression of the Sekirei's nature and take a form that pays tribute her devotion to her Ashikabi. While that seems like an awful lot of criteria for an "attack" to fulfill, Madoka is quite insistent that a Sekirei's Norito is a very singular, very personal thing.  
This form of the Norito will be referred to as the **Norito Burst** henceforth.  
The one example we have experienced of using a Norito Burst, so far, is a case where Madoka expressed her own Redaction metapsychic mind healing power in the form of a Norito Burst to heal her Ashikabi of a deep-seated psychological wound. Once she was in a Norito State by kissing her Ashikabi she only needed to touch her Ashikabi then recite a short bit of prose, which came to her at the moment in spontaneous inspiration: " _By the life of my pledge, may the harm to my Ashikabi be cured."  
_ After she recited her Norito, the entirety of the extra energy she received from kissing her Ashikabi (her Norito State) expended itself in one burst of healing power and had a dramatically larger scale effect on the target than she could have accomplished piece by piece with her Redaction, even with the Norito State energy boost in place.

The effect of 37 Madoka's Norito Burst was imprecise and was not something she could define or insist on specifics for. We need to do a great deal more experimentation to quantify exactly what can and cannot be done via Norito Burst and the Redaction metafunction, both the physical injury healing aspect of Redaction and the mind healing-modification aspect of Redaction.  
In testing with 37 Madoka it was determined that any time a Sekirei is not in a Norito State they can be put in a Norito State by their Ashikabi, _unless the Sekirei had used a Norito Burst to leave the Norito Boost State_.  
If a Sekirei expends their Norito Boost State by using the Norito Burst they are then _unable_ to be placed back into a Norito Boost State by their Ashikabi via the usual methods, until one hour has passed from the initial Wing Flare that put the Sekirei in a Norito Boost State.  
If we find a Sekirei who has a more physical form of metapsychic powers and a more physical sort of Norito Burst we might test on, we will report those results at that time. But so far it appears that a Sekirei can only utilize one Norito Burst per hour. Ideally they would use the Burst at the end of an entire hour of enjoying the across the board boost of the Norito Boost State, then immediately recover their Norito Boost State for another hour via their Ashikabi.  
It is unknown why the same Norito chant/prayer used to trigger a _Norito Burst_ would also be the verbalization used by an attacking Sekirei to terminate a Winged and Bonded Sekirei via _Norito Termination_ (see Terminology, above). I hope to have the opportunity to have 37 Madoka investigate the effects of Norito Termination on another Sekirei, using her Mental Redact Probe. We may be able to reverse or prevent this sort of termination if we can find out exactly what is going on in the targeted Sekirei's body and mind when they are subjected to a Norito Termination.

* * *

Started 19 Jan 2015  
Complete 6 Jun 2015  
Posted Jun 21 2015


	12. Bk4 - Ch3 Slice of Life

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 4.3 – Ch 12 Slice of Life

\o\NGFOM4.3/o/  
\o\NGFOM4.3/o/

Wednesday, 19 February 2020  
Roppongi neighborhood, Minato Ward, Shin Tokyo

In the middle of February, to celebrate the two-month anniversary of the night Madoka and Gregory bonded, he _finally_ took Madoka out for Karaoke. It had taken him a bit of research to find the right club but he had scored a lucky break earlier in the week when one of his Senior English students - a young woman from one of the wealthy old nobility families - noticed his personal tablet open on his desk and displaying "exclusive karaoke club" search results.

She glanced up from Gregory's tablet to meet his eyes with a thoughtful expression on her aristocratically beautiful face. When Gregory raised an eyebrow she narrowed her eyes and then, with a smirk on her lips, she wrote on a scrap of paper a phone number, a club name, and an address in Minato Ward. The address was actually inside the chic hypermodern _Roppongi Hills_ district of Minato Ward, a huge pseudo-arcology that dominated the Ward. She passed this information to Gregory as though it were state secrets of the Imperial Family. She murmured in her rather good English, "Mister Gregory, if you are looking for the very best place and you are not concerned about expense, this is the only choice. When you call to make reservations, do please give them my name and that I ask they take good care of you."

It turned out she was quite right, it was a nice place and it was _impossible_ to make reservations until he gave her name.

Before he left for work Wednesday morning he had let Madoka know that they were going out for karaoke and that she should make sure to memorize a few songs if she could because he very much wanted to hear her sing. And wear something nice but not formal!

She looked dazzling when he met her at the loft to walk to the nearby Ebisu train station; her blonde hair was dyed ebony at the ends and was bouncy shiny. Her always perfect skin looked somehow even more smooth, like tanned porcelain. She'd apparently spent part of her day buying new clothes and visiting one of the many excellent salons in the Ebisu neighborhood. It took an act of will to go ahead with his plans for their two-month anniversary as Ashikabi and Sekirei, instead of simply spending (yet another) night at their loft, having sex until he passed out from exhaustion.

"Mado-chan, you look amazing. Sexy. Gorgeous."

She smiled, almost bashfully. "Thank you, Gregory-kun. And you look very handsome as well! I am so excited we are finally going to karaoke! I read about clubs and what people do there and what to order to drink and everything. I have very much been looking forward to it."

Gregory laughed, tickled that his tendency to research new things as thoroughly as possible before committing to them had rubbed off on her. He took her hand as they walked over the small bridge crossing the Shibuya River behind their loft. "I hope the place I picked meets your expectations, the name alone should be a good omen."

He refused to say more, to her frustration and his amusement, so they took the Hibiya Line train from Ebisu to Minato Ward. Roppongi was just a few kilometers closer to the center of Tokyo than their home Shibuya and it was, if possible, even more modern and intensely commercial. They walked from the train station drop-off through the beautiful Roppongi Hills grounds; parks and walkways winding their way through and among the skyscrapers, which housed museums, hotels, restaurants of every sort imaginable, and retail stores for any brand you might desire. Gregory had visited Roppongi Hills once, years back, with Karen and Mishi, and had always struggled with finding the right word to describe the place. It covered a very large city block in the west of Shin Tokyo, in Minato Ward. It was part shopping mall, part outdoor park, part office campus for high tech firms. He privately thought of Roppongi Hills as a possible precursor to full-fledged arcologies; entirely self-contained municipalities science-fiction city planners had long speculated and that Gregory considered most likely to occur in Shin Tokyo before anywhere else on Earth.

The club they were visiting tonight was unique among Shin Tokyo karaoke clubs, from what he had read about it. Most karaoke clubs in Tokyo focused on private boxes for couples and small groups of friends; appropriate given the privacy-seeking nature of even young Japanese people who wanted to go out and party. But _this_ place dedicated most of its space to a large public bar and a professional quality stage for performing for the crowd. It was a style of karaoke club far more common in the west than in Japan, but Roppongi Hills _was_ a more western sort of place than you would find in the rest of Shin Tokyo.

Madoka laughed softly, delighted, when they approached their destination, the signs indicating "Mado Lounge" cluing her in on Gregory's little joke. The pair walked right in thanks to the reservations Gregory had arranged, though the door guards looked over Madoka before letting the couple in to confirm their reserved table, which let Gregory know that the place had standards for their patrons to meet that even money might not be able to overcome. By himself, he might never get in the door. But following Madoka? Please, right this way, Miss, let us know if there is anything you need, Miss!

Ah, life really was different for those who looked like idols and were rich. Neither category fit Gregory O'Donnell but he was glad to play tourist, in Madoka's company.

They found themselves standing in the hypermodern all-white entryway of the large club, looking at hundreds of enthusiastic, and somewhat drunk, young adult Japanese partygoers. Most were aged from _maybe_ 18 to mid-20's and were dressed in obviously new styles from the trendiest labels; everyone was wearing Lauren, Hillfiger, Brooks, and even some Armani here and there.

Mado Lounge _was_ very popular with the braver young adults in Tokyo, especially the wealthy trust fund kids and other rich, idle, young people who tried to fight off ennui with decadence and outrageous behavior. This was definitely _not_ the typical Shin Tokyo karaoke bar patronized by the drunken salaryman.

Gregory's eyes scanned the second-level balconies and private rooms that circled the high ceilinged main room. Those rooms allowed their occupants to watch the party down below or to opaque their windows for privacy. One of the private rooms full of rich boys either forgot to opaque their window or perhaps they preferred to let the crowd watch as they switched back and forth between snorting lines of coke and getting blowjobs from the pretty girls in short dresses that the rich boys had invited up from the crowd below.

Gregory was a little shocked that the prim and proper young woman in his Senior English class knew of a place like this. Genuine honest-to-god decadence wasn't unheard of in Shin Tokyo, but it _was_ a damn sight harder to find than in most of the world's great cities, like Monte-Carlo or New York City or Hong Kong.

Thank goodness for MBI's Platinum Card! It opened doors _everywhere,_ even doors into rare Shin Tokyo debauchery! Gregory spent a moment wondering how much cocaine and opium the MBI Card was good for. Do dealers take debit cards these days? It had been decades since Gregory's last ventures into purchasing anything from the underground economy. Cautious purchases of small baggies of marijuana in college made for most of his experience.

At least Madoka did not seem to have noticed what was going on upstairs. Probably because she wasn't tall enough to see over the heads of the crowd. Gregory was glad of that, he didn't feel up to explaining what cocaine was or why sex on cocaine was sex on a whole different level.

Gregory, bemused by the loud crowd downstairs and the shocking activities upstairs, so unlike what he was used to in Japan, took Madoka's hand and navigated his way to their reserved small table near the main stage. Onstage, a pair of pretty girls was singing a credible cover of the K-pop group _Mamamoo's_ hit "Mr. Ambiguous".

At least that's what Madoka told him they were singing. Gregory had no clue; K-pop and J-pop were Madoka's favorite, not his. He'd _still_ not seen any results from his now-month-long effort at telepathically causing her to prefer 1970's era American Country and Western music. But he still dedicated time every day concentrating on it! If his desire for her to like country music wasn't affecting her, what desires of his were? With no way to really know, he kept on with his daily experiment on his Sekirei Plasticity Theory.

Gregory opened a tab at the bar with the MBI Card, mentally thanking that fucking lunatic Hiroto Minaka for taking care of their ¥20,000 each door charge as well as whatever their bar tab was going to ring up to. Scanning the long list of beers available Gregory gave in to his college years nostalgia and ordered himself a bottle of Miller High Life (the Champagne of Beers!) and at Madoka's request he ordered a "Vose's Psycho Killer" from the bartender. Where she had _heard_ of such a drink Gregory could not imagine, but the mix of Irish whiskey, Campari, banana, and cocoa nib was amazingly good.

He ordered one for himself after she'd insisted he try a sip of hers.

Sitting close together at their tiny table, Gregory read over the Karaoke menu with Madoka. She pointed to a list of songs by a certain Canadian mezzo-soprano singer/songwriter he had thought of the day they met and she smiled a wordless question at Gregory.

He leaned in to speak close to her ear, "If you want to, Mado-chan. That's pretty tough stuff to sing, eh?"

"Then I will, Ashikabi-kun. I made a point to learn all of the words while you were at work!"

Gregory leaned further down to kiss Madoka's bare neck. "Just remember, we can't kiss in this place, no matter what. Your wings lighting up the whole interior of this club would draw a lot of unwanted attention. So no getting carried away and running off the stage to kiss me on the lips!"

Madoka laughed and reached up and ran her fingers through his short-cropped hair and pulling his kisses harder against her neck. "I will remember, Gregory-kun! We will make up for it in one of the private booths here later!"

Gregory smiled against her immaculate skin, "I'll order the song. And a couple more of these 'Whatsit Pyscho Killer' drink things!"

It was a few more drinks before Madoka's turn on the stage came. Gregory was amazed at how little nervousness his blonde Sekirei showed after she kissed him on the cheek and then ran up onto the stage to the microphone stand. He figured _he_ would be drenched in flop-sweat if he had to try to sing in front of a crowd this large.

Hell, just the fact that it looked as though her father was escorting Madoka for the evening already made him feel self-conscious.

" _They're just a bunch of young people; none of them know you, and none of them really matter, Greg. Focus on what matters: Madoka."_

The club was full to capacity by this point and the door attendants had stopped letting anyone in, no matter how much the prospective patrons complained about being left outside in the winter cold. Gregory glanced around, noticing there was not an empty seat anywhere. So far all of the singers had been good, though a few had been laughably bad and everyone had fun cheering them along in spite of their lack of talent.

The lights went down and a single spotlight illuminated the center of the stage where the tiny blonde Anglo girl was holding the microphone. This was the usual lighting for when the slower, ballady, songs were selected, and Gregory straightened in his chair to listen. He'd heard Madoka sing to herself occasionally, not to mention clearly remembering her singing part of the chorus of "Never My Love" into his ear just a month ago _as an argument rebuttal_. He figured she'd be smashing at this but the only way to know was to actually try it.

From the first note of Sarah McLaughlan's "I Love You" that Madoka sang, breathless and soft, pitch perfect and earnest, Gregory couldn't stop smiling.

After Madoka's performance onstage, Gregory had to educate her on how to go about declining the drinks that were now being offered to her by other men, of which there were a great number trying to do just that. He explained why they were offering her drinks, and he was thankful that at a club like this the offers came by way of the waitress instead of the fellow actually walking over to their table with an extra drink in hand. He explained that she did not have to accept the offered drinks, and in fact should not accept the offers because there was an implicit invitation to at least join the other man at his table or let him join her at her table. She was utterly shocked at even the idea; she couldn't believe anyone would expect her to treat her Ashikabi in such a way! Or that any human girl would treat their date that way!

Gregory took it all in good humor, though Madoka was offended on his behalf at first. His uncomplaining demeanor convinced her she too should take this sort of thing in stride; perhaps she should even accept the offers as the flattery they were intended as even though she declined the drinks and the implicit suggestion of joining the other man. She never got that far; she still felt slightly offended that Gregory would have to put up with other men blatantly trying to tempt her away from him. But she did soon figure out how to best tell the waitress "no thanks" without feeling obligated to accept the offered drinks when yet another offer was sent to Madoka from some smiling, hopeful, young man across the bar. It wasn't long before Gregory, Madoka, and the three girls sitting at the next table over were laughing and making bets about how many more "Vose's Psycho Killers" would be offered to Madoka before the night was out.

\o\NGFOM4.3/o/  
\o\NGFOM4.3/o/

An hour after her first turn on stage Madoka sang a second song for the crowd. She had not planned to do so; the first time she had been quite nervous and she had barely managed to force herself onto the stage. It had taken every trick of self-Redaction she had learned to keep her expression confident and to keep her hands from shaking as she had held the microphone.

It only took the first few notes of that Sarah McLaughlan song for her to know she had it right though. She could _feel_ Gregory's enthusiasm and happiness through their bond, and then she could sense the approval of the crowd. She had then been able to relax, been able to breathe properly, and she had sung the pretty, gentle, love song with confidence and courage.

The crowd cheered wildly at the end. The transition from the almost total silence from the crowd as she sang the last note to the loud applause and yelling approval of all these people after that last note faded had startled her badly and she had run off stage to the shelter of Gregory's arms, which made the crowd cheer and laugh even louder. Once she realized what was going on she laughed at herself, her face pressed against Gregory's chest and blushing.

The second song she picked from the table's menu display while Gregory was off to the bathroom. She had been casually flipping through the extensive menu and saw a song she'd listened to on the new media server at the loft just this week on a random impulse. So she ordered the song and returned to happily chatting with the girls at the table next over from her and Gregory's, girls who had performed a really good version of the old song by _The Three Degrees,_ "When Will I See You Again".

When her second song came up, she kissed her Ashikabi on the cheek for good luck and bounced up onto the stage again. Gregory was caught by surprise; he hadn't known she'd even ordered a second song. The shock she felt from him through their bond when the song began just made her smile wider and put even more into singing it.

The crowd loved it and cheered her on throughout her performance. By the time she made it back to their table, she decided she very much liked karaoke. They should do this more often!

As she gulped down the half-a-glass worth of Vose's Psycho Killer that she'd left on their table (she'd looked up bar drinks on The Google before they left the loft so that she would know at least one thing to order, and it was yummy!) she watched Gregory over the rim of the glass. He was sitting in his chair, gaping at her.

After her drink was gone, and she'd waved to the waitress to bring her another one, Madoka turned to Gregory and leaned over, "What is it, Gregory-kun? Did I not sing it right? What is the matter?" Gregory was still gaping at her. She reached over and poked him in the arm, "Hey! No looking like a dead fish with your mouth all hanging open! Did I sing the song wrong?"

"Mado-chan," Gregory leaned over closer so he wouldn't have to yell, "when the hell did you learn to sing 'Slow Hand' by Conway Freaking Twitty?"

\o\NGFOM4.3/o/  
\o\NGFOM4.3/o/

Thursday, February 20th 2020  
Ebisu District, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

Sanjunana: 76! Hello, 76, are you there?

||!GlaivesRAwesome!: yes! hi hi madoka-san! tell me how ur anniversary night out went im dying to hear about it! tell!

||Sanjunana: Oh, Midorino-san, it was so wonderful and a very nice two-month anniversary! I was so happy Gregory remembered. He is so thoughtful about things like that. The club he took me to is named Mado Lounge. How cool is that? And I sang three songs over the course of the night and all three of them the crowd loved and so did Gregory-kun! Though he was all funny about the two that I sang that were old American country songs. I do not know why. The crowd liked them a lot though! And we did not get home until midnight, poor Gregory-kun was still sleepy when he left for work this morning.

||!GlaivesRAwesome!: im so jealous of u, madoka-san! and u r winged to ur ashikabi for 2 months? me and kohaku-kun are only 2 weeks! that is so not fair! i havent gone ne where, we hav only bin stayin n the apartment n tryin 2 keep low cause kohaku-kun works every day all day. arent u worried about bng attacked?

||Sanjunana: Not really, Midorino-san. The Sekirei Plan is supposed to still be the First Phase, right? This is when we are all supposed to be finding our Ashikabi, getting to know them, and keeping the Sekirei Plan secret. The Professor was very clear about that in the briefing when he called us right after Gregory winged me. Fighting in the streets would bring the anger of MBI down on anyone who gave away the secret before the Second Phase starts. At least, that is how I understand it.

||!GlaivesRAwesome!: u are right! i hadnt thought of it like that! yes i remember the TV the professor appeared in kohaku-kuns apartment after i kissed kohaku-kun! and the professor told me and kohaku-kun we absolutely positively had to keep the sekirei plan super secret or mbi would arrange for something bad to happen to kohaku-kun at his work. that was the 1st time i had evr been mad at the professor so i remembr it very well. i thought i wuz just lucky and hadnt found ne sekirei 2 fight yet but if we are supposed 2 keep our existenc and the sekireipln secret ur right we shudnt haf 2 worry about bng attacked n public at least nt yet.

||Sanjunana: The only ones to worry about would be those who are breaking the rules and hopefully MBI is taking care of those and removing them from the game. Are you looking forward to the four of us meeting for lunch, Saturday? I know Gregory-kun and I both are.

||!GlaivesRAwesome!: yes very much! i spent sinc pubeadjust in group 4 and there waznt many other sekirei and all of us that were there had been taken from other groups any time we made friends and put in group 4 so no1 n group 4 made ne effort 2 make friends ne more. it was very lonely. now that ur gregory explained 2 kohaku-kun and kohaku-kun explaind 2 me y fighting the other sekirei is a bad idea i admit i am looking forward 2 meeting u and ur ashikabi gregory and hope that we can b good friends!

||Sanjunana: I have no doubt we will be, Midorino-san. And your Ashikabi Kohaku-san sounds like a wonderful guy. I hope all four of us can be good friends too!  
I have a question though, and don't take this wrong, but… what exactly is a glaive?

||!GlaivesRAwesome!: oh! that is my weapon u shud c it! it is so awesome! i will show u saturday if we go 2 the park like u said we might! i luv my glaive! it is MUCH MUCH better than an ax or sword! stupid sword users + spear users + fist types! i hate them soooooo much i hav my goal of proving them wrong n showing every1 that glaives are the best weapon ever! that is my dream!

||Sanjunana: … okay then! We will see you and Kohaku-san Saturday at 1 o'clock then.

Madoka closed the chat app on her phone and opened Google to search for "glaive". She also made a mental note to herself to never, ever, imply any other weapon was better than a glaive, at least where Midorino could hear her.

Weapon users and their fanatic attachment to their favorite toys! Crazy!

\o\NGFOM4.3/o/  
\o\NGFOM4.3/o/

Saturday, February 22nd 2020  
Shinjuku Ward, Shin Tokyo

Madoka waited for Gregory to show up at the Nishi-Shinjuku subway station, a few blocks away from where they were to meet with 76 Midorino and her Ashikabi for lunch at 1pm. He was supposed to take the train from Shinjuku Station near the O'Donnell apartment after his Saturday ESL class and meet her here.

She was wearing her pink jacket over a grey, long sleeve, cotton, V-neck, which was tucked into snug button-fly jeans. Since she and Gregory would be walking a lot today, to train stations and from train stations, she chose a comfortable pair of tennis shoes instead of her favorite black leather boots. Slung across her torso from one shoulder to the opposite hip she had Gregory's Nikon v10 bag with all the extra equipment he packed with it for the possible photoshoot at the Shinjuku Central Park. From the other shoulder hung her purse, with a hand on the strap at all times.

She'd had one purse stolen from her in Shin Tokyo. Never again!

"Mado-chan!" Gregory's voice caught her attention as he walked up the stairs from the subway platform to the street level. He was wearing his teacher jacket, shirt, and tie, but she thought he looked handsome anyway. She smiled and walked quickly to take her Ashikabi's hand and then stretch up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. She had to be careful about kissing him on the lips in public places, at least until the Second Phase of the Sekirei Plan where secrecy wouldn't be as big a concern.

"Hello, Gregory-kun. How was your day at school?" The two walked, hand in hand, out of the Nishi-Shinjuku station, crossed busy Honan Street the station was on, and then turned to walk along the sidewalk in the direction of Shinjuku Central Park, a few hundred meters to the east.

"It was good, really good. It's getting near the last month of this class so the adult Second Language students are fluent enough that it's not painful to have them speak English. Did you have any trouble with the train and subway trip from the safe house?"

She shook her head, "No, it was no trouble at all. I made sure to memorize the stops and transfers, so it was really straightforward. Only Shinjuku Station was tricky, but that station is always a maze."

"Yeah, I know what you mean, Mado-chan. Shinjuku Station is difficult even for me and I've gone through it many times in the five years I've lived practically next door to it. Busiest train station in the world."

The couple turned off Honan Street into a narrow back-street which would eventually lead them to the back of the restaurant they were meeting 76 Midorino and her Ashikabi at for lunch. Gregory felt that taking the back way and approaching the restaurant from the back gave her the best chance to scan for other Sekirei in the area to see if they were walking into a trap.

It was a pleasant walk, past small storefronts and a few tiny shrines. There were only a few other pedestrians and the occasional bicyclist to watch for, and the blue skies and cool February air made the day very nice.

After a few turns in their route along the back streets and as they were approaching the restaurant, they paused at the corner of a building and Gregory bent to retie his shoe. Madoka engaged her Farsight and scanned all around them, searching for other Sekirei.

Gregory asked, "Do you sense anything unusual? Can you tell if 76 is already at the restaurant?"

Madoka shook her head, "One winged Sekirei, ahead and to the right, about 30 meters that way." She pointed in the direction they both knew the restaurant was located. "So I am going to guess they have not set up an ambush with any other Sekirei. And both Midorino and her Ashikabi look like they are inside the restaurant waiting for us."

Gregory frowned and looked up and down the backstreet, then said, "Well, I guess there's no reason to back out now, is there? We've been as careful as we can be, if this is still an ambush then we will do our best to get away and out onto the busy sidewalks on the main streets and hope that discourages anyone from pursuing and breaking MBI's secrecy. So, you ready?"

She cancelled her Farsight and nodded, "Yes, Gregory-kun. Let us go and meet our first Sekirei and Ashikabi couple and hopefully make new friends."

\o\NGFOM4.3/o/  
\o\NGFOM4.3/o/

"Hello, Hara-san, it's nice to meet you. I am Gregory O'Donnell, please call me Gregory." Gregory always introduced his name American style since it made the Japanese speaker prone to referring to him as Gregory-san instead of attempting the more difficult O'Donnell-san. "My compliments on your selection for our lunch today; barbecue is a good choice. And this place is right across from the Kumano Shrine and Shinjuku Central Park, so it was very easy for us to find."

He gestured to Madoka, who had one hand resting on his arm and her other hand was holding the strap for his Nikon v10 camera bag to her far shoulder. "And this is my lovely Sanjunana Madoka which you probably recognize from her portfolio of pictures." The other Ashikabi smiled a bit wider at that and Midorino playfully swatted his arm. Gregory and Madoka laughed along with the other pair's teasing. Gregory then shook the other Ashikabi's hand then offered his hand to the Sekirei. After a moment's hesitation the tall, lithe, Sekirei 76 shook his hand while blushing for some reason. All four smiled politely during their mutual handshaking and greetings while looking each other over.

Sekirei 76 Midorino appeared to be a little younger than Madoka's approximate 20 years of age. Call her… 17 years old, maybe? She was strawberry blonde and blue eyed, like Madoka, but Midorino was much taller, probably near 180 cm versus Madoka's 150 cm, so almost exactly one foot taller than Madoka. Midorino had a robust, strong-looking, body with modest B-cup breasts (at Gregory's best guess) as opposed to Madoka's shorter frame and aggressively feminine curves. She was _very_ pretty, with a face that had faultless bone structure. A smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose complimented her strawberry blonde hair very nicely and was in contrast to Madoka's porcelain smooth complexion.

76 Midorino's eyes were striking; they were a lighter shade of blue than Madoka's and her eyes really drew the attention of anyone looking her way. They were definitely her most remarkable feature. Gregory's guess at her ethnicity would have been English or perhaps Welsh, if he didn't know already that she was a Sekirei. She was wearing a black leather jacket over a tight stretchy top, which had a low flat neckline that revealed most of her upper chest and probably had spaghetti straps over the shoulders. She wore tight black pants of a slightly shiny material, the legs of which were tucked into calf-high leather boots that matched the leather jacket.

Resting on the bench between her and the window was a five-foot long, hard-shelled, latched case with a handle. It probably contained the melee weapon Madoka had told him Midorino used.

If they went to the park for photos after lunch, Gregory was positive that he could get good photos of her in that outfit. He made a mental note to bring a cup of crushed ice on their walk in the park; that skintight elastic top with the assumed spaghetti straps over the shoulders was a _perfect_ opportunity for nipple bumps. She might not be that bold, but best to have some ice at hand if she turned out she was.

Hara Kohaku was a young Japanese man, perhaps 25 years old. He was almost as tall as Gregory but like many tall Japanese men he seemed to have never grown out of the awkward, lanky, stooped over, stage. Gregory understood the most common cause; it was rarely a positive thing to stand out in Japanese schools, so males who were taller than usual tended to stoop in order to blend in with the crowd. Japanese public education culture exemplified the concept of "the nail that stands out most gets hammered hardest". Kohaku was wearing a decent black suit, white shirt, black tie, all well pressed and clean, the universal uniform of the Japanese salaryman. Gregory noticed a college class-ring on the young man's hand, so he was likely a recent graduate just starting out on the career ladder in his chosen field.

"Please, call me Kohaku, Gregory-san. It is a pleasure to meet you."

"Thank you Kohaku-san, and your lovely Nanajuroko Midorino, for meeting Mado-chan and I for lunch."

Friendly smiles and nods all around as the four of them took their seats at the table; Gregory and Madoka on one bench facing Kohaku and Midorino on the other bench. The girls were seated next to the window looking out at the beautiful Kumano Shrine across the wide street. The two Sekirei were quiet, which did not particularly surprise Gregory. New social situations were usually the man's job to navigate in Japan; the Sekirei would probably follow his and Kohaku's lead until the ice was broken.

Orders were quickly placed with the waitress and the table fell into an awkward silence. Gregory chuckled and asked Kohaku directly, "Can we pretend that we've all been very very polite and now we can move on to where we can all relax and get to know each other over our lunch? We can blame my rude Americanness for moving forward so quickly if you'd like, I truly don't mind."

Kohaku relaxed his shoulders and leaned forward, seeming relieved that Gregory was pushing for a more informal atmosphere. "Oh, thank you, Gregory-san. I am required to have lunch with my very stuffy superiors at the office six days a week; being able to relax at lunch will be a treat. And whether your Americanness is rude or not I couldn't say, but your Japanese is amazingly good. My compliments, you must have put a great deal of effort into learning our language so well."

Gregory smiled at that, as did Madoka. "I would hope I had fluency at this point, Kohaku-san; I teach High School Senior English at Tokyo Metro High in Shibuya Ward. Being as accomplished with Japanese as I am with my native English is a requirement for the job. But thank you for the compliment; it _did_ take years of focused study to get to this point, that's certain."

The other Ashikabi shook his head, bemused. "I don't think I'd have the courage to move all the way to the other side of the world for a job, even if I had the drive to master their language. How long have you been here?"

"Five years, going on six. I enjoy teaching High School English, it's much less stressful than the full time Adult Education teaching that most Westerners take up when they decide to try teaching as a way of getting an extended visit to Japan."

Gregory and Kohaku discussed their respective professional lives (Kohaku was, in fact, a salaryman working for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in the Code Compliance department) while their Sekirei began their own whispered conversation. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government had its main offices on the opposite side of Shinjuku Central Park from the barbecue restaurant they were sitting in, which was why Kohaku was familiar with this particular eatery. Gregory could see the distinctive dual towers of the enormous Tokyo Metropolitan Government skyscraper, stretching up above the winter trees of the park across the street, when Kohaku pointed them out.

"Though I assure you my own cubicle is nowhere near the floors that you can see over the trees from here. I suspect they would put those in my humble strata in the basement if it were practical."

Gregory laughed, deciding that he liked Kohaku's unassuming, self-deprecating, humor; Gregory had much the same tendency. The other Ashikabi seemed remarkably open and friendly, which in turn allowed Gregory to relax and be friendlier, himself.

After their orders arrived, the four enjoyed spending several minutes roasting the sliced cuts of beef on the grille in the center of their table. Gregory spent a few minutes commenting on the differences between Japanese (and Korean) yakiniku barbecue and barbecue in the U.S. "I love yakiniku barbecue, but I do sometimes miss the simplicity of a chopped brisket sandwich piled high with pickles and onions with a spicy barbecue sauce dripping from the meat."

Kohaku commented, "I would love to try American style barbecue, I don't think I've ever had it. Is there anywhere in Tokyo you know of which serves that style? I picked this place because barbecue was always my favorite food, going back to my childhood. A new barbecue style sounds like a great idea to try!"

"American style barbecue is very uncommon in Shin Tokyo but yes, there is a place, not too far from where we live in Shibuya Ward, in Jingūmae district as a matter of fact. Just a few blocks away from our favorite Starbucks, Mado-chan." Gregory gestured for the server to bring refills for their drinks, then he continued, "I believe they claim to be Shin Tokyo's first 'authentic' barbecue restaurant and they only opened in 2013, so there aren't many restaurants in Shin Tokyo that serve that sort of food. The name of the place is 'Smokehouse' and they serve a passable Kansas City style American barbecue. They mostly serve pork and chicken, instead of beef brisket, though their dinner menu has a few beef brisket items. Sure, it's the sort of trendy Shibuya Ward restaurant, near the Omotesandō, where a plain cheeseburger will set you back ¥1600 and they offer items like smoked Norwegian salmon on the appetizer menu, but I can personally vouch for the quality and authenticity of their pulled pork, grilled chicken breast, and their beef brisket."

Gregory pulled his slices of now-cooked finely marbled beef from the grille in the center of their table and popped the first one into his mouth, chewing happily. "Ah. Talking about barbecue was making me hungry for barbecue."

Madoka paused in the rapid-fire conversation she and Midorino had been engaged in and giggled at him. "Gregory-kun, only you."

He grinned at his pretty, blonde, Sekirei, "It's a different kind of barbecue, really, Mado-chan! That's it, Kohaku-san, next meal we all share it's our MBI card's treat and we'll have dinner at Smokehouse so that the beef brisket will be on the menu and we can try everything on the menu!"

Midorino, who was outpacing Kohaku's grilling and eating by two to one (much like Madoka was doing to Gregory) clapped her hands excitedly, "Oh, can we, Kohaku-kun? Please?"

Kohaku looked at his Sekirei with the same sort of hopelessly indulgent expression that Gregory usually wore when Madoka asked for anything. Gregory noticed this and grinned over at his own Sekirei, figuring it was a sure thing the foursome would be having dinner at Smokehouse soon.

Once Gregory and Kohaku had their fill of yakiniku barbecue, and the girls were still going strong, grilling and eating a second full order of beef slices, Kohaku brought up the Sekirei Plan. "So, Gregory-san, I wished to hear your opinion on how we can survive this Sekirei Plan. I know we exchanged…"

Gregory reached across the table and placed a hand on Kohaku's arm and shook his head. He took his cell phone from his jacket pocket and gestured negatively at the phone. Kohaku nodded his understanding and commented "Ah. It is like that?"

"Perhaps. It's hard to know for sure, but…" Gregory smiled apologetically at Kohaku for cutting him off as he had. He pulled an ink pen from an inside pocket of his jacket and quickly wrote on a napkin " _Avoid talking about the Plan or MBI until we are all away from our phones and other likely listening devices."_ He slid the napkin over for Kohaku to read, and then passed his pen over to the other Ashikabi at Kohaku's request.

Kohaku wrote " _Agreed, and if we are concerned about MBI monitoring communications we should only be using encrypted chat and email. I know a web based service out of Canada that provides both through any web browser and which uses 256-bit public key encryption and it is cheap, only ¥3500 per year per account. I also could, if we needed, set up our own private OpenPGP mail and chat server, which would be even more secure_. _As in 'the American CIA could not crack the messages open' secure."_

Gregory read the note and smiled, adding to the napkin conversation, " _Brilliant! And very good thinking, Kohaku-san, I hadn't considered encrypted email and chat. I assumed such things would be difficult and technical but if there's a simple public key style web browser service? Yes!_ _Give me the name of that solution for now. I will set up accounts for Madoka and myself, and then you let me know what you and Midorino-san's usernames are there. We should probably make a policy of always using that service for communications other than the social media completely-for-public-consumption stuff. Maybe your private system will be needed in the future but for now let us go for ease of use over worry about court orders to the web hosts in Canada. Once we have secure communications I've got quite a lot of information to give you, mostly techniques on security, how to use the MBI Card effectively and securely, things like that."_

Kohaku read what Gregory wrote and then nodded agreement. Gregory handed the other Ashikabi a business card from his wallet and Kohaku wrote down the information for the web-based encrypted email and chat system on the card's back and then slid the card back across the table to Gregory.

Gregory placed the now-heavily-ink-covered napkin on the grille in the middle of the table where it quickly flared in yellow flames and was consumed. The smoke flue, directly above the grille at every table, connected to the ventilation system in the ceiling, easily took away the paper's smoke. Gregory apologized profusely to the waitress and to the day manager of the restaurant, both of whom had been alarmed at the quick flare of the napkin burning. "I am very sorry; my clumsiness is entirely at fault. It was only a paper napkin, so no need for concern. Truly, I apologize."

The two Ashikabi grinned at each other after the waitress and the manager departed, and then Gregory commented in a low voice, "You know, Kohaku-san, I never considered before how handy the grille on the table is for things like that."

Kohaku laughed, "Indeed, Gregory-san! I too have never considered the secret utility of the barbecue grille fire! You know, Gregory-san, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, yes?"

Agreeing with the younger man and now of the opinion that Kohaku had likely felt as though he had been in "over his head" with the Sekirei Plan and his new live-in-girlfriend, having a work schedule that was far more demanding than Gregory's was and he had much less time to think and plan than Gregory did. With Gregory and Madoka offering friendship and someone to conspire with against MBI and other, hostile, Ashikabi/Sekirei groups, Gregory could see the relief on the younger man's face.

Overhearing something from the two Sekirei's conversation, Gregory turned his attention to their Sekirei. "Hold on, Midorino-san, what's a glaive?"

Kohaku facepalmed and groaned, "Oh no, Gregory-san! Don't get her started!"

Gregory and Madoka both laughed as Midorino smacked her Ashikabi on the arm repeatedly. She pushed Kohaku to get him moving off the bench and insisted "Let's go Kohaku-kun, let's go to the park! I want to show Mado-chan…" and here the tall, blonde, number 76 lowered her voice in a stage-whisper, "… the you-know-what! In the case! My glaive! You know! Oh, and to get some pictures! Like Mado-chan has!"

Laughing along with Madoka and Kohaku at Midorini's less-than-effective efforts at discretion, Gregory then told the others he'd meet them out front of the restaurant after he settled the bill. He held up the MBI Card so that Kohaku understood there was no obligation to try to pay for "their half" of the lunch or anything of that sort.

Collecting the Nikon v10 carrying case this time so that Madoka wouldn't need to burden herself with the bag, he went to the register stand to pay the bill. Kohaku escorted Madoka and Midorino outside where they loitered on the sidewalk. Gregory watched the three through the tall window next to the restaurant's door, glad to see Madoka smiling and seeming to genuinely enjoy Midorino's brash and maybe-a-bit-airheaded company.

Madoka also appeared to be making an effort to engage Kohaku in conversation, which encouraged Gregory. It had been difficult, as they had talked about the lunch date and made contingency plans before they arrived, to convince her that it really was okay for her to talk to another Ashikabi, just like talking to a regular person! Indeed, Gregory _wanted_ her to talk to both Midorino and her Ashikabi. He didn't want her to be silent, seen-and-not-heard, and only speaking to the other Sekirei and avoiding speaking to the Ashikabi.

Japanese culture was frustratingly regressive when it came to an attached female interacting with a new male acquaintance, even in casual situations and among the younger generation.

It was something Gregory made note of and promised he would try to get Madoka to _truly_ believe that she had just as much right to strike up a conversation with someone, with anyone, as he did. Gregory respected Japanese culture; he found it delightful and dignified. However, he respectfully _disagreed_ with how that culture treated women. So he insisted to Madoka that it _wasn't_ improper for her to carry on a conversation with Kohaku-san, or anyone else, male or female. She was as much a free adult person as _he_ was.

He figured it would be an uphill battle that took some time to make progress on; she really was soft spoken and reserved in public. Except for her new inclination towards a bold exhibitionism that he found very entertaining.

Declining a receipt for the lunch, he thanked the manager for the restaurant's hospitality and left to join the others, shouldering the carrying bag for the Nikon v10. It was sunny out and just an hour past noon; he would definitely be able to get some nice pictures at the park of Midorino if that was what she and Kohaku wanted.

\o\NGFOM4.3/o/  
\o\NGFOM4.3/o/

An hour later, after the foursome had walked about Shinjuku Central Park and spent some time taking photos of Midorino and a few of Kohaku and his Sekirei together, Madoka called out, "Gregory-kun, I am going to take Mido-chan to the Forever 21 just down the street. We will be back quickly, she wants to get more photos but in a different outfit."

"Sounds good, Mado-chan. We'll wait here, if that's alright with you, Kohaku-san?" Gregory put the lens cap on the Nikon and looked over at Kohaku, who was sitting on a park bench behind Gregory, watching him shoot pictures of Midorino.

The younger Ashikabi nodded, "Sure, that is fine. Do please hurry though; don't leave us sitting here for an hour while you two get lost in clothes shopping." Kohaku grinned at Midorino. "I know how you can be with clothes."

"Mah mah, we'll hurry!" A visibly and obviously very happy Midorino ran over and kissed her Ashikabi on the cheek then waited as Madoka kissed Gregory on the cheek, then the two Sekirei took off towards a clothing store that neither man could see but had no doubt that the two females had sensed, through metapsychic or feminine powers, they couldn't guess.

Gregory pulled the Nikon and its tripod over next to the park bench and made sure he had all the rest of his photography paraphernalia out of the walkway, and then he sat on the bench next to Kohaku. Gregory pulled his own phone from his jacket, held it up for Kohaku to see, then pulled the back off the phone and removed the battery. Gregory then put his phone and the battery in separate jacket pockets then nodded to Kohaku.

The other Ashikabi got the picture, removing the battery to his own cell phone and putting them away. As soon as he had done so, Gregory said, "There's no way to know how much reach MBI Intelligence has, that's the problem. Can they monitor the GPS locations on all of our phones and other GPS capable devices, like my car? Maybe. Can they listen in on conversations by hacking your phone so that it acts like a bug you carry with you everywhere? Maybe. There's just no way to really know for sure. So, Kohaku-san, what Mado and I try to do is be paranoid but not too paranoid. There's a point of diminishing returns, you know? If you take it too far you're living in the sewers under the city wearing a hat made out of tin foil to protect yourself from the mind control lasers."

Kohaku chuckled at that. "That's a good point, Gregory-san. And I'd bet there are a lot of aspects to this whole crazy situation that you've thought out that I've not had a chance to even consider yet. I just met Midorino two weeks ago, you said you've been involved in this for over two months?"

"Yeah, it was two months ago last Wednesday that I winged Madoka. Just before Christmas, actually. It's been… well, it's been pretty crazy. But we've tried to spend time thinking of how to stay out of MBI's sight or at least make it so MBI's files on us are filled with inaccurate information. I don't think anyone is going to actually hide from them, they can afford to hire the best private investigators and security firms in the country. If they want to put a team of experts staking out your apartment and your workplace and tailing you everywhere you drive, there's nothing people like you or I are going to do to avoid that."

"Yeah, very true." Kohaku sighed and took a can of green tea from the small cooler he and Midorino had brought along for the park visit this afternoon. "So, give them misinformation through the channels that we assume they are watching. Things like GPS tracking, cell phone locations, where the MBI Card gets used. And your suggestion about daily ATM withdrawals is a very good one, that will give us, eventually, a non-traceable source of funds to do things like rent secondary places to live or hide. Thanks for that suggestion, that will help me and Midorino out greatly."

"Sure, no problem, Kohaku-san. I know this all hit me like a ton of bricks and it took me weeks to wrap my head around the craziness that's now a part of my daily life. And I'm lucky enough to not have a seven day a week job like you do." Gregory looked at the younger man sympathetically.

Kohaku snorted, "Yeah, I'm lucky if I get a Sunday off. Most weeks I can count on at least a half day Sunday and all day Saturday. That's why I don't have a girlfriend or wife. Well, not until now I guess." Kohaku shook his head and leaned forward on the park bench, resting his elbows on his knees. "I certainly wasn't expecting to suddenly have a live-in… whatever this is."

Gregory grinned sardonically, "Yeah, that part of it sure caught me off guard too. Forgive my bluntness on the subject, Kohaku-san, but what do you know about how the Sekirei view their relationship with their Ashikabi?"

Looking down at his hands rolling the can of green tea back and forth between his palms, Kohaku shook his head and replied, "Not as much as I'd like. Midorino said something about us being partners forever and ever, but I don't really know what they mean by that. And I get the impression there's more to it than this stupid fighting tournament thing. And… well… eh…"

Gregory chuckled, "Yeah, Midorino's been coming onto you, right? Making hints about making your relationship a romantic or physical one?"

Kohaku looked over at Gregory, surprise on his features. "Yeah. How did you know? Oh, same thing with you and Madoka-san?"

"Well, kinda. Mado-chan and I moved past that point quite a while ago. And you're wondering if there's anything wrong with taking your relationship with Midorino to that stage, am I right?"

"Yeah, exactly." Kohaku sighed. "So, that's the kind of relationship Sekirei want with their Ashikabi? It's not just some partnership in a fighting tournament; it's a… mate relationship?"

"Pretty much. They aren't here to fight to the death until only one is left, Kohaku-san. That's something that fucking lunatic Hiroto Minaka came up with and MBI has brainwashed the Sekirei into. As far as I can tell their main goal is to find their Ashikabi and establish this lifetime mate bond. And probably reproduce, though from everything I can tell MBI has stopped any Sekirei reproduction for at least the expected duration of the Sekirei Plan." Gregory leaned back on the park bench and watched the few other park visitors enjoying the sunny day. "So, if you're worried that you're taking advantage of Midorino by taking her to bed, you're not. In fact, quite the opposite. If you resist and fight her off you'll upset her. There's more to this Wing Bond than just that first kiss. The closer and more genuine your relationship is with your Sekirei, the stronger the bond seems to be and, perhaps, the stronger your Sekirei is as well."

Kohaku thought about that for a moment, then said, "Okay. I think I can figure it from there. Thank you, Gregory-san. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have someone to talk about that with; it's really been stressing me out."

Gregory nodded, "I can imagine. Trust me, there's no reason to try to be all noble and monkish about your relationship with your Sekirei. That's not what she wants. I guarantee it."

Smiling, Kohaku nodded back. "Good! Okay, what about the Sekirei Plan itself and MBI? We'll be able to communicate securely once we all get encrypted email and chat accounts, but is there anything you need to tell me now, while we're probably not being listened to?"

"Yeah, several things. Let me knock them out while we have the chance." Gregory began ticking off numbers on his fingers, "First, how to abuse your MBI Card, you've got that now from our talk earlier. Second, being aware of GPS tracking on your phones and cars and their tracking of your bank accounts and they'll be watching for unusual phone traffic to distant relatives and friends. Third, get yourself and Midorino a box full of burner phones with prepaid data plans, swap them out any time you suspect that phone may have communicated with someone who's phone is compromised. We will be able to use those in conjunction with the encrypted email and chat service you recommended for as close to foolproof communications as we're likely to find. Fourth, find a place to rent, prepaid cash, and at least get food and such laid up there so you and Midorino will have a safe place to hide out if necessary. Fifth, make sure you don't just disappear from MBI Intelligence's tracking efforts. It's a far better idea to keep sending data to them. Just be sure it's invalid data."

Gregory paused for a moment in thought, and then continued, "You should know that while it's highly unlikely the Sekirei are really aliens, like the girls think they are, they do absolutely have abilities that are outside of what normal humans have. That part of it is real. I've been doing as much methodical observational science as I can with only having one data source, Madoka, but yeah, there's genuine more-than-human abilities here. I've got a lot of notes on it, what we're calling metapsychic abilities. If we can add some additional data from Midorino-san that would help a lot. Once I have the encrypted email set up I'll email you what I've got, until we have a foolproof secure way to communicate we're pretty limited. So I'll absolutely set up those encrypted email and chat accounts for myself and for Mado-chan. Earlier you mentioned that you studied statistical analysis at Tokyo University?"

"Yeah," Kohaku replied, "I received my degree from the Graduate School of Mathematics at Tokyo University."

"Awesome." Gregory smiled, "That's really helpful; statistical analysis and data collection really isn't something I'm an expert in. I've quizzed Madoka in detail about the studies MBI was doing with the Sekirei during all the years they had the Sekirei imprisoned and it seems like MBI wasn't doing research on the Sekirei's metafunctions either. They were mostly focused on how to brainwash the Sekirei into participating in this stupid game. And yes, if you're thinking that doesn't make any damn sense at all, I'll agree with you, wholeheartedly. Kohaku-san If I send you some data to analyze and if you can put it into some sort of order that makes sense, that would be a huge help to my basic, fumbling, efforts to quantify what we're dealing with here. And unless we understand the true abilities of our Sekirei and things like the nature of the Wing Bond, it'll be damn hard to make good plans for the future."

Enthusiastic agreement from Kohaku lifted Gregory's spirits. The younger man said, "I'll be glad to help in any way I can. I'm busy with my job so much but I'll find the time to help as much as I can, Gregory-san."

"Good, thank you, Kohaku-san, that's all anyone can ask." Gregory spotted Madoka and Midorino across the busy street from the park, carrying a few bags and heading back towards their Ashikabi. "One last thing. A strategy for surviving this crazy shit. The best idea I could come up with was reaching out to other Ashikabi before they get sold on this 'fight fight fight until only one remains' bullshit, and convincing _them_ to convince their _Sekirei_ that genocide is a bad thing. Then we make alliances among the Ashikabi and Sekirei pairs in the west, here, so that we can all call upon each other when needed and so we can hopefully convince any gung-ho combative Sekirei to take up residence in other parts of the city. Let them be someone else's problem while all of us in the west cooperate and watch each other's backs as much as possible."

Kohaku agreed, "Gregory-san, I think that's the best idea we are going to come up with. Even if we thought our Sekirei could win this tournament that doesn't change the fact that it's immoral. I mean, it doesn't get much worse than genocide. It's… it's terribly crazy that Minaka and MBI think anyone is going to go along with this. The Sekirei they brainwashed, okay, but all of the Ashikabi? But if we all cooperate and ally with each other hopefully we can be safe, for now at least, from MBI Enforcement and from the other, hostile, Sekirei and Ashikabi who've compromised MBI Intelligence, like that Higa Izumi guy you told us about."

Gregory offered his hand to Kohaku. As the younger Ashikabi took the offered hand and shook it, Gregory said, "Then we'll consider you and Midorino our first allies, Kohaku-san. You two can call on us any time and we'll do our best to be there for you in any need you have."

Kohaku nodded, "Same here, Gregory-san. Thank you, this has really taken a load off my mind."

"Good, me too, Kohaku-san. Now, our beautiful girls are almost back and it looks like Mido-chan has changed into new clothes so, with your permission, I'll go take even more awesome pictures of her for you and for the social media page."

With an only slightly embarrassed expression, Kohaku nodded agreement and stood next to Gregory, watching their Sekirei walking towards them. "To be frank, I didn't believe you at first but it is as you said, Gregory-kun. It does seem that if I approve of something she approves too. Those pictures you took with the ice and the, um… her…um…"

"Nipples, Kohaku-san. They're called nipples." Gregory grinned over at the other Ashikabi as he picked up the Nikon and its tripod, preparing for more shots of Midorino and hopefully a few of Madoka as well today. "Like I told you earlier, the Ashikabi wield a great deal of influence over their Sekirei, more than what you'd normally see in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. More than in a husband/wife relationship, for that matter. You wanted her to pose and have fun, so she did. We need to be aware and use that influence carefully, Kohaku-san. These girls have had terrible, hard, lives, with grim futures if MBI has anything to say about it. If we, as their Ashikabi, can influence them to be happy and to have fun with their lives, we're doing a good thing, the way I see it."

Gregory was not going to tell Kohaku everything he had discovered about Sekirei Plasticity, not yet, but he had told the younger Ashikabi that if Kohaku really wanted Midorino to pose for sexy photos she would go along, probably eagerly.

Kohaku had agreed to try. Sure enough, just as Gregory had predicted, when Kohaku encouraged Midorino to go along with Gregory and Madoka's ideas for awesome sexy Sekirei pictures, Midorino had jumped in with both feet, enthusiastically.

Kohaku laughed, still somewhat embarrassed. "Yes, just so, Gregory-san. Those pictures were… they were awesome! Mido-chan and I both trust you and Madoka-san, and your skill with a camera is obvious. We put ourselves in your and Madoka-san's hands. Please take care of us."

\o\NGFOM4.3/o/  
\o\NGFOM4.3/o/

Later that afternoon Madoka and Gregory were in the Jeep and heading to Minato Ward, to the east of their home in Shibuya.

They had bid their new allies goodbye and had returned to the O'Donnell apartment to grab their overnight bags. They then drove out on Prefectural Route 319, which would take them directly to where they had room reservations for this weekend at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo.

The Grand Hyatt was the cornerstone hotel of the Roppongi Hills pseudo-arcology where they had gone for karaoke earlier in the week. Having seen the luxurious, towering, Grand Hyatt last Wednesday as they walked to the Mado Lounge, they decided it _had_ to be next on their " _Every Weekend A New 5 Star Hotel_ " tour of Shin Tokyo.

Madoka made herself comfortable in the passenger seat of the Jeep after connecting her phone to the sound system and queuing up some music for the ride. With the baritone voice of Don Williams singing softly in the background, she turned to face Gregory.

"That went well, did it not, Gregory-kun? I will admit I was a nervous wreck at first, I just knew something was going to go wrong and Midorino and her Ashikabi would be luring us into a trap or something."

"It did go well," Gregory replied. "And I admit I was worried as well. But I really don't know what else we can do that's a better plan than trying to make friends and allies among the other Sekirei and Ashikabi out there, especially the ones who live in the west of the city. Thankfully it worked out okay this time, eh?"

She nodded agreement and then said, "It was fortunate that she and I sat across from each other at the restaurant. I was able to reach across and hold her hand while we were talking and it seemed natural."

"Exactly, Mado-chan. You did that so smoothly I didn't realize you'd taken her hand and I was watching for it. So, I got the signal from you that everything checked out okay, but did you get any details when you mind-walked Midorino when you were able to take her hand?"

"I read that what she and Kohaku-san were saying was the truth. She was just released from the MBI Sekirei Labs two weeks ago and that same day she ran into Kohaku-san and reacted to him strongly enough that she just kissed him out of the blue." Madoka smiled at the memory, which she had plucked from the other Sekirei's mind. "It was really very sweet the way it happened. But yes, she has been hiding in his apartment alone most days and he works almost all of the time so she is very lonely and she has been scared, too, about fighting more powerful Sekirei who might have their Ashikabi at hand to give them their Norito and so be able to defeat her easily."

Gregory snorted, "I can't imagine most Ashikabi are going to be cruising Shin Tokyo all day and night with their Sekirei, looking for other Sekirei to attack, you know? Damn near everyone in this city who's older than 17 works insane hours; my only working 5 days a week at the school and half a day on Saturday is considered extreme career slacking by the standards most Ashikabi are likely living by."

"I never realized how lucky I was," Madoka said. "I thought you had to be away a lot for your job but I see now that you really have a lot more time away from work to spend with me than someone like Kohaku-san has to spend with Mido-chan. But, anyway, the first thing I looked for in her mind was any clue they were setting us up for betrayal. And nothing of the kind was in her mind at all; they both seemed to genuinely be hoping to make allies to help them survive together, much like we are hoping."

"Thank God for that, Mado-chan. So, it seems like our tactics for this encounter worked out okay, this time. Circling the block on foot before the time we were scheduled to meet, you scanning for any other Sekirei in range before we committed to entering the restaurant, making sure there was only one winged Sekirei there and her Ashikabi. It all worked out so we knew what we were getting into before we couldn't easily back away."

She nodded, and then reached over to take Gregory's hand while they were on a straight stretch of road and he didn't need to shift the Jeep's gears for a bit. She just liked the feel of him being in contact with her anytime it was practical. "Yes, so we can write that down as our plan from now on any time we are going to meet with a new Sekirei. I do not know what range other Sekirei can detect me at, but I know that today Midorino did not know we were nearby, until we walked into the restaurant. Maybe I have better range at Farsense than the fighter types do?"

"Could be," Gregory replied. "It's certainly something we need to get more data on. If you can detect them long before they can detect you, that will help a great deal in keeping us safe. So, what else did you pick up? You were going to see if you could determine Kohaku's and Midorino's power levels and what metafaculties she had. Did you have any luck with that?"

"Yes, as soon as I saw them, and again several times during our afternoon. Let me look at my notes." Madoka let go of Gregory's hand and opened her phone to bring up her encrypted notepad app where she kept all of her notes. She also opened the file that had the terms and definitions she and Gregory had come up with over the last two months for discussing Sekirei metapsychic abilities. She still thought her Ashikabi was being far too detail oriented about the Sekirei's powers, more so than the scientists in the MBI Sekirei Labs ever seemed to be. But it made him happy so she played along.

"Mido-chan scans as a power rating 25. Compared to my rating of 40. She does get more of a boost to her rating from being in a Norito Boost State than I get, due to Kohaku-san having a higher power rating than you have. She jumps from a 25 to a 50 when she gets her Norito Boost."

"And your rating," Gregory added, "jumps from 40 to 52 with your Norito Boost, because I don't add as much as Kohaku-san does."

Madoka did not like what they were learning about the effects of more powerful and less powerful Ashikabi were on their Sekirei, but she could not argue with the results they had measured. She grudgingly agreed, "Yes, that is what it looks like."

"Hmmmm." Gregory considered the results for a few minutes then said, "Make sure we scan and record every Sekirei and Ashikabi we meet, okay, Mado-chan? We need facts to base our actions on and whether we like the facts or not, we still need them."

"Okay, Gregory-kun. Oh, and I received a message from Mido-chan, she confirmed that she felt her Norito Boost State wear off exactly one hour after she kissed Kohaku-san and got her Wing Flare, so it looks like one hour is the duration for the Norito Boost State, not just for me, but for all Sekirei likely." She might not like the facts and even though she did not agree with the numbers that were telling her that her Ashikabi was a poor choice compared to Kohaku, but she wasn't going to go against something her Ashikabi insisted was important.

\o\NGFOM4.3/o/  
\o\NGFOM4.3/o/

Saturday, February 22nd 2020  
Roppongi district, Minato Ward, Shin Tokyo

It was nearing midnight when the two lovers practically staggered into their room at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo. The dinner they had just been treated to sated even Madoka's appetite. Gregory swore he'd never had anything as delicious as the Matsuzaka tenderloin steak that the chef prepared for them at the hotel's outstanding Keyakizaka Restaurant.

Given that there were ten different top quality restaurants at the Grand Hyatt, Gregory guessed he and Madoka would be spending more weekends here, just to see if they were all as fantastic as the Keyakizaka!

The Grand King Suite they had for the weekend was larger than the suite at the Mandarin Oriental they'd enjoyed. Larger than the safe house loft for that matter! And this room was not the best in the hotel, there were several higher than the "mere" ¥100,400 a night room they'd manage to reserve, including the Presidential Suite which covered 260 square meters, or 2700 sq. feet, and would put you back a cool one-million yen a night.

Needless to say, that room wasn't available or they would be trying it out tonight. A million yen a night hotel room? Gregory's mind swirled at the concept. The room they were in was amazing already! Over 900 square feet of luxury and comfort with a view towards downtown Shin Tokyo in the northeast and every extra comfort and indulgence Gregory could conceive of.

The bathroom had a huge LED wall mounted TV! There was a 2-meter holotank in the "living room" of the suite! All of the furnishings were workshop crafted Italian brands! The limestone bath and rain shower were so decadent Gregory felt like he could die in that room and be content!

Gregory tried to tell the difference between _this_ five star hotel and the Mandarin Oriental's five star accommodations. Eventually Gregory decided he was just far too plebian to appreciate the fine distinctions. They were _all_ incredible as far as he was concerned.

But still, the Grand Hyatt Tokyo was now at the top of his list for the best hotels in Shin Tokyo, edging out the Mandarin Oriental by just an inch.

Gregory dropped his dinner jacket onto the couch and stepped out onto the balcony where he lit a cigarette. Madoka joined him there carrying a tumbler of scotch on ice for him and for her a glass of what looked like white wine.

After handing him the glass of whiskey, Madoka took one of his cigarettes for herself. He had chided her for picking up the habit, when he first saw her with a cigarette. But her insistence that her expected lifespan was optimistically measured in months, thanks to the Sekirei Plan, rather put a damper on his paternal scolding instinct.

After the two gazed out towards downtown Shin Tokyo, Madoka murmured, "See that extremely tall skyscraper, due south of the Imperial Palace grounds? The one standing off by itself a bit, none of the nearby buildings are close to rivaling it." She pointed and Gregory sighted along her dainty finger to see which of the many towering skyscrapers of Shin Tokyo she might be referring.

He nodded and said, "Yeah, I see it. That's one of the newer towers in the city, built in the last 10 years. Toranomon, or something like that? It's really impressive. Is it a good hotel you'd like to try?"

She shook her head and lowered her hand, "No. That's MBI's Shin Tokyo Headquarters, and yes, it's called Toranomon Tower. They own the entire building, I understand, built to Hiroto Minaka's specifications. But, no, I do not think I would like to stay there again, as I spent almost my entire life there or at the facility at Kamakura Island."

"Hmmm. Then our wonderful room here has a worse view than I thought it did. Having to look out at that fucking lunatic's home."

Madoka giggled at that and seemed to put MBI out of her mind for now. She stood next to him, leaning into his body for warmth. It wasn't so much cold as cool, but their room was on the 20th floor so it was breezy and it was nighttime in February. And the dress Madoka had chosen to wear tonight was delightfully backless.

Gregory put his arm around her as she snuggled in closer, and he smiled to himself. Delightfully backless indeed; he had been treated to so much lovely incidental Madoka sideboob tonight that he was impatient for dinner to settle so he could take his beautiful Sekirei to bed.

Still, something seemed… off, tonight. There was a vague tension in the air for which he could not identify the cause.

Madoka spoke up, breaking the silence on the balcony, "Does it not seem like something should be happening, Gregory-kun?"

Gregory responded with a nod and soft grunt of agreement. It _did_ feel like something should be happening and it was affecting Madoka too. Another luxurious hotel, another incredible dinner at a restaurant he'd never been able to enjoy before this whole Sekirei Plan thing fell into his life. The prospect of another night spent with his beautiful Sekirei in bed. He couldn't imagine a better place to be than right where he was.

Yet the atmosphere was still, pensive, and there was a sense that something was waiting to happen.

"It _was_ nice having lunch with Kohaku-san and Midorino-san today," Gregory ventured. "And we've now made our first official allies, so that's a positive event, right?"

Madoka agreed, "Yes, there is that. And we did get several very nice pictures of Mido-chan to post on the Sekirei Google+ group, as well as a few nice pictures of Kohaku-san and Mido-chan together. She is really pretty and took to having sexy pictures taken right away. I expected her to be more reserved for some reason but she just went for it as soon as I mentioned the ice and the nipple bump photo. It was all I could do to resist just jumping her cute little butt."

Madoka turned her face into his chest, blushing at the confession.

Gregory laughed, squeezed her shoulder, and replied, "Yes, she is very pretty and she takes a very good picture. I was impressed with how well you helped her with poses and with getting her ready for photos, Mado-chan. The two of us working together get far better results than if it were just me trying to convince a teenage Sekirei to put ice on her tits so I can take pictures of her nipple bumps sticking out in her shirt."

Madoka giggled softly against his side and nodded.

He continued, "I'll probably work on that tomorrow night, when we get back to the apartment." Gregory sipped his scotch and sighed, "Ahhh. But… yeah, it still feels like something is hanging over our heads, like something is supposed to happen."

A few moments of quiet later and she shrugged against his chest and then moved towards the glass door leading back into their suite. "We could have sex. That is something, yes, Gregory-kun?"

He grinned at her, "Why, yes, that _is_ something, Mado-chan. Let's do that!"

"Waahoo!" She smiled and cheered and then ran off to get dressed into whatever she had decided to let him tear off her in bed tonight.

Before she could get to her overnight bag Madoka's phone jingled in her purse. It was her original, non-safe, phone; they always carried those anytime they weren't going to or from the loft. It wouldn't do to let MBI's presumed phone-GPS-trackers think they never went anywhere at all. Besides, MBI knew very well exactly where they were this weekend since MBI was paying the bill.

She went over to the handbag and pulled out her phone, answering it, "Sanjunana Madoka, who is calling?"

Gregory slid the balcony door closed quietly behind him as he entered the room, waiting to hear who would be calling Madoka's phone. As far as he knew, no one had the number, certainly no one who'd call late on a Saturday night.

"YOSUGA! You are out? Yay! Where are you? Do not move! No, move, no, wait, hold on!" Madoka's excitement overran her brain for a moment, and then she remembered the plan she and Gregory had long come up with for when 44 Yosuga managed to contact her.

"Yosu-chan, do you see a train or bus terminal nearby? You see a train station? What does it say? Ochanomizu Station?" She looked towards Gregory who was already punching in the station name into the search on his phone.

Gregory called over to Madoka while grabbing his jacket, "North of downtown, on the Chūō main line. Akihabara, basically. Eight kilometers; 20 minutes from here in the Jeep."

Madoka nodded acknowledgement to Gregory then spoke into her phone, "Yosu-chan, listen to me carefully. There are Sekirei who know when and where some of us are released into the city by MBI and they ambush the newly released Sekirei. So hide but stay at or near the Ochanomizu station. Run to that station; I will come for you in maybe 20 minutes. Yes, yes, with my Ashikabi. We will be driving a big orange American car with a white canvas top, just watch the traffic on the street outside the train station. 15 minutes! Stay safe, Yosu-chan!"

Madoka took her own jacket from Gregory's hand and pulled it on as they went out the door towards the elevators. She excitedly yelled, "Oh, Gregory-kun! I just knew something was supposed to happen!"

\o\NGFOM4.3/o/  
\o\NGFOM4.3/o/

* * *

Songs mentioned in this chapter:

"Mr. Ambiguous" by the K-pop group Mamamoo.

"I Love You" by Sarah McLachlan. From her album "Surfacing".

"When Will I See You Again" by The Three Degrees.

"Slow Hand" by Conway Twitty, from the album "Southern Comfort". Originally recorded by The Pointer Sisters as an R&B song.

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 _ **The Sekirei**_

 ** _Sekirei Plasticity_**

I can report that my initial test of my Sekirei Plasticity Theory _**has succeeded!**_ As of 19 Feb 2020, Madoka now chooses to listen to 1970's and 1980's Country and Western music (henceforth "Urban Cowboy Country") by preference _over_ J-Pop and K-Pop. Urban Cowboy Country is not the _only_ music she selects for her own enjoyment but there is a definite preference on her part for this genre of music now.  
Whereas prior to 21 Jan 2020 (initiation of my first efforts at deliberately wishing for my Sekirei to prefer Urban Cowboy Country music over other genres) she had never selected anything except J-Pop and K-Pop.  
That it took a month (the test began on 21 Jan 2020) of 2 minutes of concentration on the "desire" every four hours (except while sleeping), or four to five 2 minute episodes per day, for results to show from my efforts could be due to many factors impossible to determine at this point.  
Some possible reasons for the time required for the test to prove positive:  
1) My own limited metapsychic potential (Madoka describes my baseline metapsychic rating as "1" with "1" being defined as "the minimum required to evoke any reaction at all from a Sekirei compared to what she remembers of Ashikabi Higa Izumi, who would carry a rating of 45, forty-five times my own metapsychic potential rating, see Notebook Entry: Metapsychic Potential Ratings in the next chapter);  
2) There could have been other, less conscious and deliberate, desires on my part which were given priority (see: notes on changes in Madoka's sex drive);  
3) The fact that she did not have easy _opportunity_ to discover this genre of music until we copied all of my existing media library from my family's apartment media server to the new media server at the loft (Friday 31 Jan 2020) which included many songs in this genre;  
4) Making any change to the psychology of a bonded Sekirei may simply take approximately 30 days;  
5) Some other unknown factors unguessable at this point.

I have not told Madoka about this test and its results yet. Partially because I would like to see how long it takes her to come across this information when she is casually reading my thoughts or memories as she is prone to doing when we are in close contact (without deliberate intent in many cases).  
And partially because if it were I who was being informed that my sovereignty over my thoughts and my mind may be less than absolute, I would find such a prospect terrifying, perhaps to the point of madness. Even now I shudder at the idea that I possess such influence in shaping the mind, the very being, of my Sekirei. The notion that I could reshape another sentient being's mind by mere wish or desire is _repulsive_ , _revolting_.  
Even _evil._ No one should have such power over another sentient being!  
How I would feel at the prospect of being on the other end of this level of such influence is beyond my ability to imagine.  
Hence my reluctance to speak with Madoka about this subject.  
There _are_ many elements of this Sekirei Plasticity that need to be determined and measured though. Is it unique to 37 Madoka? Obviously, I have only one subject to test so it is entirely possible that only 37 Madoka is subject to this influence, perhaps as a function of her rare Redaction metafaculty? But if so then many Sekirei could be stuck in bonds with incompatible Ashikabi. As the wing bond is purported to be (emphasis though on the unproven nature of the information we have on the matter) a permanent, lifetime, bond enforced by pain and perhaps even death for the Sekirei (but not likely for the Ashikabi), then Sekirei Plasticity may be a lesser evil than the alternative.

The prospect that MBI may have information on _how_ the characteristic of Sekirei Plasticity was engineered into the Sekirei is also horrifying in its implications. As the Sekirei are no doubt extremely compatible genetically (and if what Madoka has said about the Sekirei intending to breed with Terran humans they are by definition homo sapiens, thus genetically _identical_ to Terran humans except for whatever part of their genome defines their metapsychic abilities and possibly their "tama core", whatever that is) then MBI would have the potential to inflict the Wing Bond and the Sekirei Plasticity traits _on Terran humans_.  
I pray to God that this is not the case or at the _least_ that these traits are not inheritable! Please God let the Kouten have been wise enough to make the Wing Bonding and Sekirei Plasticity traits "run once then delete" elements of the Sekirei genome!  
If not then we could be witnessing the end of Act One of the story of the human race and the beginning of Act Two: the dominion over all of the human race unfortunate enough to qualify as a "Sekirei" by those who are genetically fortunate enough to qualify as an "Ashikabi".  
The only hope I can see would be:  
a) if the traits of Wing Bonding and Sekirei Plasticity cannot be inflicted on an already defined full genome (i.e., any point in a person's existence after the initial fertilization of the egg by a sperm) by various genetic engineering methods, and;  
b) these characteristics cannot be engineered into the parental gametes (the separate "half-of-the-recipe" contained in the egg and in the sperm) so as to breed for these characteristics in the next generation even though the current generation may be immune.  
But as 100% of the characteristics of a Sekirei is very likely defined by their genetics (i.e., are phenotypic traits just like blonde hair or the blueprint for a human liver), _including their trait of having potential for Wing Bonding and Sekirei Plasticity_ , _and_ their genetics are (supposedly) completely compatible with Terran humanity, I find myself unable to put much hope in either A or B above, at least not without engaging in extreme wishful thinking.  
It IS possible that the Kouten engineered these traits to only exist in the 108 Sekirei aboard their colonization ships, that these traits are NOT phenotypic traits.  
If that is the case, if the Wing Bond trait and the Sekirei Plasticity trait are _truly_ artificial and were attached somehow only to the 108 Sekirei (or 107 because 01 may be an exception to the rules for the unborn Sekirei), then there would therefore be little in the way of a Kouten _cultural foundation_ for the Ashikabi and Sekirei social structure. And according to Madoka there were indications that the Ashikabi/Sekirei social structure pre-dated MBI's meddling. In other words, this social structure is historical to Kouten and therefore a long-standing characteristic of their species or at least their culture.  
Mostly these hints or indications were from 02 Matsu, who would occasionally pass on knowledge of the Sekirei's nature to the younger inhabitants of the MBI Sekirei Labs, perhaps as a function of 02 Matsu's supposed knowledge specialty?  
If I get the opportunity to ask her, I will certainly do so. Unfortunately, she seems to have disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs over 10 years ago (best guess at the timeline).  
No, I am afraid the most likely scenario is that these two characteristics, with all their alarming implications, are indeed phenotypic traits encoded in the Sekirei's genome and that genome is 100% compatible with that of Terran human.  
And MBI has, at the _least_ , the knowledge that these traits _can_ be encoded in the homo sapiens genome.  
And knowing something can be done is a surety that it _will_ be done. If it is possible to encode Wing Bonding and Plasticity into the human genome… it will eventually be done.  
And that prospect will haunt me until the day I die.

 ** _Metapsychics_**

 ** _Sekirei Power Ratings_**

 **OMPR** (Overall Metapsychic Power Rating)  
With a scan from a Farsensor Novice any persons overall metapsychic strength can be gauged. The Farsensor can usually determine the persons Native OMPR (the power rating they have naturally before any multipliers are enacted) as well as their Adjusted OMPR (the power rating after multipliers from factors like a Wing Bond to an Ashikabi, what the Ashikabi's multiplier is, and if the subject is in a Norito Boost state).

 **MfPR** (Metafunction Power Rating)  
A Farsensor Adept can scan for the individual power ratings of each of a person's metafunctions, whether the metafunctions are latent or operant. Both Native MfPR and Adjusted MfPR can be determined, as per OMPR above.

* * *

 _From a recording of a conversation between Madoka and myself. I need to convert this to standard notation ASAP._

 _Important Note: all of the following is highly speculative, since we only have two subjects to judge by, namely 37 Madoka and her Ashikabi myself, and 76 Midorino and her Ashikabi Hara Kohaku._

Madoka: "Starting with Kohaku-san and his ratings, because those have a substantial effect on Midorino's ratings in her Norito Boost State. Kohaku-san started out with a Native OMPR of 10, approximately 10 times your Native OMPR. After he Wing Bonded 76 Midorino his OMPR went up to 15, so there is definitely a multiplying effect the Ashikabi gets from his Sekirei and that effect varies depending on the Sekirei. Midorino appears to have a x1.5 multiplier she grants her Ashikabi, where I seem to have a x2 multiplier I granted you."

Gregory: "Mado-chan, it's damn handy you can see what their ratings were pre-Wing Bond as well as current. That gives us a lot more data to work from."

Madoka: "Yes, it is very handy. Since I could tell what Kohaku-san's pre- and post- Wing Bond OMPR was I could tell what 76 Midorino's Bonus to Ashikabi is. Same for you and I, so I could tell what my Bonus to Ashikabi is."

Gregory: "So, we now know that the Sekirei increases the power rating of their Ashikabi _and_ that the Ashikabi increases the power rating of their Sekirei by addition with the Norito Boost State. And we have a tentative idea of what both of those factors are. Midorino is a 1.5 multiplier for her Ashikabi, so as soon as she Wing Bonded to Kohaku his base power rating of 10 went to 15. Then his 15 power rating granted a plus 25 bonus to Midorino's various metafunction ratings when she's in the Norito Boost State?"

Madoka: "Right, just so, Gregory-kun. Based on the 1.0 OMPR we see for you and the 2.0 OMPR you have after Wing Bonding me. My power ratings on my metafunctions increased by 12 from a Norito Boost State. It seems our guess that the Ashikabi's bonus to the Sekirei is directly related to his effective OMPR was correct and that it is additive. Thank goodness it isn't multiplicative. That would get insane real fast."

* * *

This was the first evidence we had of how much a disadvantage I and my bare minimum metapsychic power rating was for any Sekirei that was Wing Bonded to me. My own OMPR and Ashikabi Additive would always be a fraction of what a more powerfully metapsychic Ashikabi could grant. Kohaku-san's native OMPR of 10 was not exceptional, yet due to starting out with a OMPR of 10 then getting his Sekirei's Bonus to Ashikabi of x1.5 resulting in him having an effective OMPR of 15. This gives his Sekirei an Ashikabi Additive of 25 across all of her abilities when they were in Norito Boost.

Compared to my own native OMPR of 1, then Madoka's x2 Bonus to Ashikabi giving me a OMPR of 2. This gives my Sekirei an Ashikabi Additive of only 12 across all of her abilities when in Norito Boost.

Tentative Formula for Ashikabi Effect for Wing Bonded Sekirei's Overall Metapsychic Power Ratings:

Ashikabi Additive to Norito Boost State = 10 + (Ashikabi OMPR)

Thus, for Kohaku:

\+ (15)= 25 Additive

For myself:

\+ (2) = 12 Additive

One can easily see that having multiple Sekirei, each multiplying their Ashikabi's OMPR by various degrees, would result in Sekirei who are substantially more powerful than the Sekirei who are bonded to lower powered and/or single Bonded Ashikabi.

* * *

Started June 1, 2015  
Completed June 20, 2015  
Posted Jun 21 2015

Book Five (Chapters 13-Whatever, introducing 44 Yosuga to the story) has been outlined but not written at all yet at the time of this posting. I would expect it to be a month or so, maybe longer, before Book Five is ready to be posted, so until then, thank you all for your support, Favorites, Follows, and Reviews!


	13. Bk5 - Ch1 Sekirei Number 44

No Game For Old Men

Book 5.1 Ch13 - "Sekirei Number 44"

 _Authors Notes: This chapter includes the first extensive use of Farspeech by the Sekirei in the story. We use braces, such as { and } (and, btw, it's been pointed out that one of the fonts available in the fanfiction dot net android app will not render the brace character, the { or the }. If you don't see a character there, select one of the other fonts in the app!) to designate the start and end of Farspeech in much the same way that regular speech uses " to designate the start and end of vocal speech. Readers should easily understand how the convention works, in context. Farspeech is less clear when the speaker has a less disciplined mind, so jumbles of emotions might be intertwined with words. This is usually marked with a pound sign, #. Again, this should be understandable in context._

 _{Farspeech or other Metapsychic communication}  
[Memories]  
"Internal dialogue."_

(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)  
(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)

Saturday February 22nd, 2020

Sanjunana Madoka, Sekirei number 37, rode impatiently in the passenger seat of her Ashikabi's Jeep Wrangler. She and her Ashikabi, Gregory O'Donnell, were driving to Ochanomizu Station, one of the many hundreds of commuter train stations scattered across Shin Tokyo. Madoka's best friend, Sekirei number 44, Yosuga, had just phoned from that part of the city to let Madoka know that Yosuga had finally been released into the city from the MBI Sekirei Labs and that she was waiting for Madoka to come meet up with her. Yosuga had been told to hide in the rail station and to watch the street out front for Gregory's orange Jeep with its white canvas top in 20 minutes. Madoka held her cell phone in her right hand, ready to pick up in case Yosuga called again.

Madoka hoped the phone remained silent; if it rang that meant there was a problem. She did not want any problems, she did not want any complications, and she did not want any drama. She had waited too long to see her friend for any nonsense to get in the way now!

She looked to her right, watching Gregory drive. He appeared to be driving them to Ochanomizu Station with haste, but not so fast as to draw the attention of the police or endanger others on the road.

She wished he would drive maybe a _little_ bit faster.

"So, Mado-chan," Gregory's deep voice broke the tense silence in the cab of the Jeep, "what's our plan as we approach Ochanomizu Station? And don't forget to keep subvocalizing what you're seeing and doing for the audio recording on your phone so we can review it later, okay?"

Madoka knew he was quizzing her on their predefined plans and their tactics for first meetings with other Sekirei in order to help her focus and calm her nerves. She appreciated the thought. Her earlier excitement about Yosu-chan being released into the city had been entirely replaced by worry about the many terrible things that could befall her friend before Madoka and Gregory could get to her.

"Yes, I will remember the recording, Gregory-kun. So, tactics. First, when you tell me that we are within half a kilometer of our objective I will focus my Farsense on trying to detect other Sekirei in the immediate area." Madoka looked off to the left again, out the passenger side window. She watched the lush foliage of the Imperial Palace grounds go by, illuminated by carefully placed lights behind the concrete retaining walls that lined the Inner Circular Route Tollway, which provided east-west auto traffic a scenic passage through the very center of Shin Tokyo.

After a moment she continued, "I will be looking for any winged Sekirei, since we are meeting with an unwinged Sekirei and the presence of a winged Sekirei in the area would be a red flag."

"Meeting a supposedly unwinged Sekirei, Mado-chan. We can't ignore the possibility that your friend has already been winged by an Ashikabi who is now using her as bait to draw you out for an easy kill."

Madoka clenched her jaw at the reminder. She knew it was a possibility that Yosuga had already been winged. This could be a trap set for her by Yosuga at the order of an Ashikabi who she could not deny. Madoka did not _want_ to admit it but she could not deny the possibility.

Watching the nighttime scenery go by through the passenger side window, she responded to her Ashikabi's reminder with a flat, "Yes. Just so, Gregory-kun."

After a moment, Madoka continued with their plan, "If I notice any winged Sekirei then we will assume they are there on purpose, either to ambush Yosuga or to ambush us. I will tell you immediately and we will drive by the target destination without stopping, watching for any sign of an unwinged Sekirei who could be Yosu-chan. If I spot an unwinged Sekirei, we will try to identify her. If it is Yosu-chan then we will pick her up and move away from the area quickly. Doubly so if there are winged Sekirei about. And, obviously, if there are no unwinged Sekirei in the area, we have to assume this was an ambush set for us by our target and we need to immediately withdraw, driving to safety as directly as possible."

"Good, Mado-chan." Gregory's baritone voice was soothing which she needed right now. He sounded pleased that she could confidently recite their pre-determined tactics for this situation. Madoka's mind was not really focused on the plan, though. Even the _idea_ that Yosuga could be winged to someone like Higa Izumi and be forced to take part in an ambush made Madoka's stomach hurt. Worse was picturing Yosuga being treated like 101 Oriha had been. Tied naked to a wooden contraption and whipped with a scourge? _That_ thought made Madoka want to throw up.

Gregory continued, reciting the next part of their predetermined plan for this sort of scenario. "If we are attacked by winged Sekirei we will haul our asses away as fast as practical. We'll use the Jeep to get away if possible; we'll go on foot if we must. Stay together, look for local police to connect with, and maybe discourage hostile pursuit. We'll deal with the consequences of talking with the police if and when that happens. That's a better option than running off alone and getting killed by hostile Sekirei."

Madoka was not entirely convinced Gregory was right about that though his arguments were hard for her to counter. _If_ a Sekirei was pursuing her who was going to terminate her anyway then… well, then he was right. In that situation it _would_ be a good idea to arrange for the hostile Sekirei to fight her in front of as many human witnesses as possible. The prospect of having to attack Madoka in front of many witnesses, especially if the witnesses included the Tokyo Police, _might_ convince a pursuer to let her go and to try again later.

It was just that… going to the human authorities went against everything she had been told growing up. Getting human authorities involved was the _worst_ thing any Sekirei could do according to the people in the MBI Sekirei Labs.

Gregory made the argument that the hypothetical hostile Sekirei in that scenario would be just as reluctant, maybe even more so, to get the Tokyo authorities involved. This made this an even more effective evasion tactic.

"Hopefully that isn't the scenario," Gregory added. "If we pick up your friend and get away from any potential ambushers, we will drive back to the Tokyo Grand Hyatt and invite her up to our suite. There is plenty of room, and if this is her first day out of the MBI Sekirei Labs then she is going to be disoriented and nervous. I will leave it to you to keep her calm and explain that she can sleep in our suite's living area. The couch in there turns into a guest bed. Or, if she prefers, she can rent her own room at the Grand Hyatt, or anywhere else if she wants, and we'll be glad to show her how that's done. But if she stays with us we can get her a late dinner and share breakfast in the morning and make sure she's briefed on at least the basics of navigating the city."

Madoka relaxed her frowning features and looked down at the phone in her lap. She murmured, "I hope it is simple and we get back to the hotel with Yosu-chan. Then I can tell her all the things I have learned so that she can have an easier time of it than I had."

Gregory reached over and squeezed her right hand with his left and reassured her, "Me too. I hope for the best right alongside you, Mado-chan. I know how much she means to you. But let's not take anything for granted, okay? Every new situation and encounter is a chance to practice our plans, test our tactics, to see if there's anything we missed and come up with polish for them. Better safe than sorry and never waste an opportunity, right?"

Making an effort to smile, Madoka looked over at her Ashikabi and nodded. "Yes, just so, Gregory-kun. Better safe than sorry. Though I am afraid this means I should probably start practicing using my Farsight while in a vehicle that is moving. It is quite a bit more difficult than using it while stationary."

She noticed that Gregory grinned at that suggestion. He knew she was not a big fan of adding unpleasant tasks to her to-do list and, thanks to the psychic backlash she experienced every time she lost control of her Farsight, what she was suggesting _would_ be unpleasant. Madoka was glad she had suggested it before he could. It showed Gregory that she was willing to do what was necessary but difficult. And that was one of the big differences between being a child and being an adult.

Once past the Imperial Palace they left the Inner Circular Route Tollway and began working their way along the densely populated streets of the north side of downtown Shin Tokyo. Shortly they were into Chiyoda Ward, which occupied the space north of downtown up to the Kanda River. The ancient river ran east-west and made for a natural border between the center of Shin Tokyo and the north of the metropolis. Madoka knew from the map on her phone that she was watching that the Ochanomizu Rail Station was right up against the south bank of the Kanda River. It was next to a four-lane bridge that crossed the small river and connected Chiyoda Ward on the south bank with Bunkyo Ward on the north bank.

They would be approaching the rail station from the south, driving directly past it and then onto the bridge and then across the river, unless she could spot Yosuga with her Farsense.

They were getting close…

"Mado-chan, we're 500 meters out. Buckle up! Wait, first get into the back seat! That way if your friend needs to get in fast she'll be able to get into the front seat."

"Oh, good idea, Gregory-kun!" Madoka unlatched her seat belt as she murmured into the cheek mic of her phone, "Note: add that to the checklist. I should start these things in the passenger side backseat and already buckled in. This so that the target can enter the easily accessed passenger front seat instead of trying to climb into the backseat while possibly in danger."

Madoka clambered into the back seat of the Jeep, climbing between the bucket seats and atop the center console. She struggled with her fancy dress as she went. She was _not_ dressed for climbing around inside the Jeep!

She caught Gregory checking out her butt in the rear-view mirror as she struggled to get into the back seat. She could only shake her head. Was there any circumstance under which her Ashikabi wouldn't ogle her? His regard was flattering but poorly timed.

Once she was in the backseat on the passenger side, she felt around in the dimly lit interior for the seat belt. Not having often been in the back seat of the Jeep she had a difficult time locating the straps and buckles of the seat belt. She did finally fasten it around her waist and across her torso. Madoka mentally patted herself on the back for remembering how to fasten the seat belt without Gregory having to help her and possibly cutting his hand badly, like what happened in December when 86 Katsuragi was chasing them. She then reached out with her Farsense, trying to detect any other Sekirei in the immediate area.

It was _far_ more difficult to use Farsense while moving in a vehicle, but she persevered.

Gregory called out, "Less than 100 meters now, Mado-chan! Start looking! Ochanomizu Station will be up on our right, far side of the crossing street, with the bridge across the Kanda River just past it!"

"I see it now, Gregory-kun." And she could, with her Farsight. Her eyes were now closed to help her focus. She had something of a bird's eye view above and behind the Jeep. Her point-of-view pulled back and up as far as she could manage without losing control, some 10 meters up was the practical limit. She could see the well-lit entrance to the Ochanomizu Rail Station ahead, past the many tall buildings that crowded close along the north-south running street on which they were driving. Just beyond the station was the darkness of the Kanda River and the brightly lit bridge that crossed it.

Madoka strained her Farsense, desperately hoping to find just one unwinged Sekirei in the area.

A strong glow caught her attention, ahead, to the right, and downward. " _So, inside the station itself and under the street level,"_ she thought. It was a very strong glow… too strong for an unwinged Sekirei. Madoka bit her lower lip and gripped her cell phone in her white-knuckled hand. _"No, no, damnit, no…"_ Their procedure said she should be telling Gregory immediately that there was a winged Sekirei ahead but she waited, hoping…

She sensed a second strong glow, also ahead and to the right, and downward. Two winged Sekirei! She could not deny it, no matter how much she wanted to. Was there a third Sekirei around, unwinged? She had to tell Gregory it was a trap, she had to tell him now.

Wait! There!

"Gregory-kun, there are two winged Sekirei in the station and they are moving fast in pursuit of a third Sekirei, who is unwinged! I think the unwinged Sekirei is Yosuga! Wait, okay, now I am positive. The unwinged Sekirei is definitely Yosu-chan! And she's being chased by two winged Sekirei!"

She heard her Ashikabi mutter a curse, "Damnit! Okay Mado-chan, I am going to drive by the station, slowly, and then keep going north, onto the bridge. Once across the Kanda River we'll U-turn and come back south, across the bridge again, and make another pass! Watch for the unwinged Sekirei, watch for any sign that she's moving out of the station and if so, in what direction, so we can try to catch up with her!"

Madoka was too focused on her Farsense to answer with more than a nod. They slowly rolled past the Ochanomizu Rail Station and continued north onto the bridge spanning the Kanda River. Madoka tried to keep her Farsight point-of-view stationary at the street corner that the rail station occupied as the Jeep continued moving away from the station. This was a _very_ difficult technique to attempt, keeping her point-of-view in a static location while she, herself, was moving away from it. She muttered a note for the audio recording to make sure to practice that, specifically.

Madoka intently watched the three moving glows of the Sekirei in the station. " _As long as they do not corner her, she will be okay; no one can catch Yosu-chan in the open, no one!"_

"Hurry, Gregory-kun! One of the winged Sekirei just exited the station and is watching the station exit from the rooftop while the other winged Sekirei is herding Yosu-chan towards the exit. We need to get back to the station so Yosu-chan can see us!"

Gregory called out sharply, "Is she outside yet? Or still being chased around inside the station?"

"She's still inside… but I think she will be running out of the station exit very soon! You need to go fast; do not worry about Yosu-chan catching up with us, she will catch us at any speed you are likely to drive at. That is what Yosu-chan does, Gregory-kun! She is faster than anyone!"

"Skeptical, but okay," Gregory muttered. "Guess it's time to break more traffic laws and hope that MBI Legal is still our friend."

He downshifted and made a _very_ illegal U-turn at the north end of the bridge and then accelerated back the way they just come. He was glad the streets were only lightly trafficked this time of night even in downtown Shin Tokyo. "We're coming up on the station again, Mado! Is she outside yet?"

"She is at the entrance to the station, but I cannot tell where the other Sekirei is, the one that was on the roof… ah, ow!"

Madoka cried out in pain as she finally exceeded her skill with her Farsense metafaculty and experienced the pain of her point-of-view harshly snapping back into her skull. She gripped her head in both hands and leaned forward in the back seat, eyes closed and face contorted in a grimace. She managed to shout out through the agony, "I lost it, Gregory-kun! I do not know where the ambushing Sekirei is, but Yosu-chan should see us driving by!"

(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)

Gregory grimaced when he heard the pain in Madoka's voice as she let him know her Farsense was out of play for now.

"Damnit, damnit," he growled while watching to his left, out through the rolled-down passenger side window. He could see the wide entrance to the train station ahead. It was set at a 45-degree angle to the street corner. Somewhere up above that entrance there was probably an enemy Sekirei waiting to jump down onto Madoka's friend.

A loud thump startled him, and then he realized something had struck the back of the Jeep. He slammed on the brakes, terrified that he had run over a pedestrian thanks to paying attention to the train station instead of where he was driving. Surprising him even more, a lean Asian girl with dark hair and golden skin swung down off the canvas roof of the Jeep and then onto the foot rail that ran along the passenger side of the Jeep. He only had time to notice that she wore a leather bikini top covering her small breasts and low-cut matching pants before she stuck her face through the open passenger-side window and yelled, "Go! Go!"

Gregory's mind took a terribly long time to register that his new passenger had run across the open plaza in front of the station entrance, jumped at the Jeep, and had then grabbed the rear bumper and the rear rollbar. She'd then climbed up and over, to the passenger side. The delay, caused by Gregory trying to figure out what the hell was going on, caused the girl to shout again, "Go! Gehen Sie jetzt , schnell! Schnell!"

What the hell? Was she yelling at him in German?

Madoka called, weakly, from the backseat, "Gregory, go! They are right behind her!"

Gregory stomped the gas and took off, going through the gears as quickly as the Jeep's straight-six engine would allow. Gregory could only hope that meant that the bikini-top-clad girl who was attached to the passenger side door of his Jeep and yelling at him in what sounded like German was indeed the Sekirei they were here to pick up.

As the Jeep lurched forward and sped up another girl ran across the plaza, angling towards the intersection the Jeep was approaching. Gregory caught a vague impression of short blonde hair, an outfit that revealed a lot of skin, and what looked like ropes or strings in the girls' hand? She expertly lassoed the tubular front bumper of the Jeep as it passed her, and then she pulled back hard on the strings she was gripping in both hands.

"Whatthefuck?!" Gregory's startled exclamation filled the cab of the Jeep and his thoughts sped on, unbelieving what he was seeing. _"Is she insane? This Jeep weighs almost 4000 pounds and we're accelerating forward! There's no goddamn way she thinks she's going to stop us!"_ He watched in incredulous amazement as the hostile blonde Sekirei was yanked off her feet and into the air by the pull on the black strings in her hands.

Gregory slammed on the Jeep's brakes which caused the girl to fly in a short, sharp arc and then impact the street in front of his vehicle with such force that there was a noticeable crater where she hit.

He had to give the girl credit for guts. She immediately leapt to her feet and somehow withdrew her strings from the Jeep's bumper, all in one smooth maneuver. Her clothing was shredded from the impact with the street but the only injury he could see on her was a perfectly round bruise right in the center of her forehead.

Not knowing what to make of that, or what to make of her shrugging off an impact that should have broken every bone in her body, Gregory decided that the wise course of action was to follow what both Madoka and the presumed Yosuga were now screaming in his ears.

Gregory hit the gas and ran down the blonde Sekirei in front of his Jeep.

(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)

Gregory lay on his stomach on the very comfortable king-sized bed that was the centerpiece of their suite at the Tokyo Grand Hyatt. Since he had some time alone he was using his personal tablet to make copies of the audio files from his and Mado's phones from the evening's excitement, renaming the files according to the naming conventions he had developed for them and moving them to the appropriate storage folder.

He wished he were good enough at scripting to make a macro that would do these mundane data maintenance tasks for him automatically. He opened his Notebook from where it lay next to him on the bed and jotted down "ask Hara Kohaku if he can script". Number 76 Midorino's Ashikabi had proven to be competent with tech and had introduced several new ideas to Gregory, like the _Hushmail_ encrypted email, SMS, and chat system that they were all going to be using soon. Maybe he knew a good way to automate some of this data entry stuff.

Was it really just earlier today that he and Mado had barbecue lunch with Hara Kohaku and 76 Midorino? _"Long damn day."_

He jerked in surprise when Mado sat on the bed next to him. He hadn't heard her enter the room. He'd assumed she would be talking with Yosuga until dawn since that's how most teenage girls would be when reunited with a dear friend after months of separation.

"Gregory-kun? Yosu-chan is sleeping on the guest bed in the living room as you suggested. We did not talk long. We agreed it was better to save it until tomorrow when we are all rested."

He nodded his agreement with that idea, glad Mado's friend was settled for the night. He continued his work with the tablet without adding any comment to what Mado said.

"Gregory-kun, Yosu-chan is also certain that she saw 31 Sai, the Sekirei you ran over, get up after we were past. We are both certain you did not kill her when you ran over her. Yosu-chan told me that it was 31 Sai and 18 Ichiya who were chasing her. Both of them declared to her that they were bonded to Izumi Higa and were there to take her to him to be winged. We really did save Yosu-chan from a fate worse than death."

Turning off the screen on his tablet, Gregory then set it aside on the table next to the bed. He swung his legs off the bed and sat on the edge, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, head bowed. "Damn. I'm sorry, Mado-chan, looks like Higa got to 18 Ichiya too. Damnit. So I guess the blonde one was 31 Sai? Your descriptions of Ichiya never portrayed her as a slender blonde with black strings or ropes as a fighting tool."

His Sekirei nodded. "Yes, the blonde we ran over was 31 Sai. I have never met her as she was not in Group 11. But she identified herself to Yosu-chan at one point in their chase tonight. And we did not see 18 Ichiya since she was the one chasing Yosu-chan inside the station. Gregory-kun, I am certain I saw 31 Sai stand up. You did not kill her, I am sure of it."

"Okay. Well, that's good to know, I guess. She had a dark bruise in the middle of her forehead. Was that Yosuga-san's doing?"

Madoka laughed softly and sat on the bed next to him. "Yes. Like I said earlier Yosu-chan is very fast. She was never as strong as the other fighting types but she was always far faster than anyone else, even 16 Toyotama and 14 Chiyo. She uses a pair of fighting sai as her weapon of choice and she told me she scored a direct strike with the pointed end of one of her weapons right in the center of 31 Sai's forehead. Would that count as irony? Or just an amusing coincidence?"

Gregory smiled slightly and turned his head to look at his beautiful Sekirei. Her expression clearly showed that she was worried about him.

He had not reacted well when he thought he had run over and killed the blonde Sekirei with the black strings. Mado had not been able to get more than a few words from him the entire drive back to the Tokyo Grand Hyatt. He left Madoka entirely in charge of figuring out what to do with 44 Yosuga while he retired to their bedroom, stripped to his boxers, and poured himself a glass of scotch before distracting himself with busywork.

"Mado-chan, I've taken the time to think about it and while I'm glad that 31 Sai wasn't killed or seriously injured… if she had been then I'd have to be okay about it. I couldn't risk you just because I was too squeamish to do what was necessary. Even if what was necessary was running over a pretty blonde teenager who didn't have any choice but to be there doing what she was doing, all because her Ashikabi happens to be an amoral monster."

He took her hand, kissed her palm, and then looked somberly into her eyes before continuing. "I'll kill any other Sekirei, or Ashikabi, or MBI employee, if that's what it takes to keep you safe. You are my life, Mado-chan."

He wasn't entirely okay with that prospect, but he would keep telling himself that he was until he could do whatever was necessary, without hesitation.

Nodding her understanding his Sekirei got up from the bed and then turned down the room lights before removing the party dress that she'd chosen for their dinner date tonight. Gregory's eyes quickly adjusted to the dim illumination in the luxurious hotel room. He watched her as, wearing nothing but a very brief thong and sheer white thigh high stockings, she hung up her dress and then slowly walked back to the bed, stopping directly in front of him.

All but nude and standing in the twilit room she was so beautiful that she took his breath away. Again.

She gave him that small, mysterious smile that she had. The one that made him think she knew _secrets_. Secrets of sex and pleasure; secrets that she would share with him if he were very fortunate.

"I know, Gregory-kun. And now let me show you how grateful I am for your devotion, my Ashikabi."

She pushed him backwards onto the bed and followed him, straddling his legs and then moving up along his body until she lay pressed against him from his knees to his chest.

Gregory did not spend any more time that night worrying about the fate of 31 Sai. Instead, he learned a few more of his Sekirei's mysteries and secrets before sleep finally took him barely an hour before dawn.

(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)  
(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)

Sunday February 23rd, 2020  
Roppongi district, Minato Ward, Shin Tokyo  
The Tokyo Grand Hyatt

Sekirei Number 44, Yosuga, wore one of the Tokyo Grand Hyatt's thick, fluffy bathrobes for warmth as she relaxed in the winter sunshine that bathed the patio of Madoka and her Ashikabi's hotel suite. It wasn't terribly cold out, 10C or so, but the plush bathrobe was the most comfortable thing Yosuga had ever worn so she kept it on as she lounged in the sun. The weather was not unpleasant, especially compared to last night when it was almost freezing when she decided to take a ride on the _outside_ of Gregory O'Donnell's Jeep. While wearing nothing from the hips up except a skimpy leather bikini top.

Not her smartest decision, that. Not the jumping onto the Jeep, no, that part was smart. But her outfit… And after she'd convinced Madoka to go with something practical, too. She was sure she would never hear the end of it from Madoka. Yosuga's choice of clothing was nowhere near practical for winter in Shin Tokyo.

Even her black leather pants were less than completely covering. They were tight as a second skin and rode very low on her hips where what was laughably called the "waistband" barely covered her pubic bone. A criss-cross laced section took the place of the traditional centered zipper-fly and was offset almost all the way around to the side, by her hip. Since the open fly was off-center so much she could get away several centimeters peek-a-boo naked skin showing from her hipbone down to her thigh.

They were hot looking pants, she thought. But with the small bikini top in matching black leather, the fingerless black leather gloves, and the knee-high black leather boots, this was not what anyone would call "winter clothes".

Nor would they call the outfit "subtle" or "keeping a low profile". The fit of insanity that caused her to order this outfit when the MBI Administrators came to take her requirements for the Sekirei Plan was a mystery to her. This was _not_ what she had prudently advised her dear friend Madoka to go with. And, of course, Madoka actually listened to her and for herself ordered blue jeans, a silk blouse, and a ski-jacket with a hood.

Yosuga knew she was going to be teased for this for the rest of her life.

" _See, this is what happens when you don't have boobs,"_ Yosuga thought morosely. _"You end up overcompensating, showing off your other attributes."_

At least the outfit did that. It showed off her athletic build, especially her muscular stomach, trim waist, and slender hips.

Now she had the chance to second-guess her moment of insanity when she decided on this outfit and dread when Madoka finally woke up and joined her on this patio. Her friend had not said anything last night as it was late and they were all tired, worn out from adrenaline if nothing else.

Where was Mado, anyway? The patio had a door from the suite's living room and from the suite's bedroom. Yosuga had slept on the comfortable couch/guest-bed last night and this morning upon awakening she'd noticed that the door between the living area and the bedroom was firmly shut. Outside on the patio she could see that the curtains of the bedroom part of the suite were drawn over the windows too. Therefore, Madoka and her Ashikabi were no doubt still abed and Yosuga had no clue as to when they would finally get up. She was hungry so she hoped they would join her soon. Madoka had mentioned the three of them having lunch together today just before she'd gone off to join her Ashikabi for the night.

Yosuga wondered how long Madoka had been wing bonded to her Ashikabi. Madoka had been taken away from Group 11 for "adjustments" several months before the first Phase One releases occurred so Yosuga did not know when Madoka had been freed to roam Shin Tokyo. It could have been months ago or just a few weeks. Madoka and her Ashikabi _were_ sharing a bed, that much was clear. And there didn't seem to be any awkwardness hinting that the arrangement was a new development.

Yosuga had been utterly shocked last night when she saw how _old_ Madoka's Ashikabi was. She'd done her best to hide her reaction and act like everything was normal and as expected. But while Yosuga never minded the possibility that she might end up with an Ashikabi that was older or overweight or poor and struggling, Madoka had always expressed a very different set of priorities. Yosuga had heard Madoka's list of features she expected her Ashikabi to have so many times she could recite the list as easily as Madoka could. And neither "old" or "American" were anywhere on that list. Nor were "balding" or "skinny", both which applied to Gregory O'Donnell.

Yosuga knew there had to be a story behind how Madoka, of all Sekirei, ended up with an Ashikabi like Gregory O'Donnell!

Looking around the luxurious hotel suite Yosuga admitted that at least Madoka's Ashikabi was seeing to it that Mado enjoyed the finer things in life. Older man, young lover, expensive gifts. Hardly an uncommon pattern, Yosuga realized.

 _{It is not like that, you know, YosugaSisterOfMyHeart.#warmlovingsmile}_

 _{MadokaSisterOfMyHeart! Goodmorning!}_

Forewarned by Madoka's Farspeech, Yosuga looked over to the patio door leading from the bedroom as it slid open and Madoka stepped out. The little blonde was dressed comfortably in what looked to Yosuga to be expensive casual clothes; no jeans and t-shirt but rather she wore a tight, black, body stocking with a turtleneck and with sleeves that ended just above the elbows. A black leather belt was snug around her slim waist and then a knee-length blue skirt that rode low on Madoka's curvy hips. Yosuga admired the knee-high, dark blue, leather boots with their chunky wedge heel that added 5cm to Madoka's diminutive stature.

 _{We could get you a pair just like them, YosugaSister, if you like. There is a Nordstrom's within walking distance of this hotel.}_

Envious, as always, of Madoka's disciplined and clear Farspeech, Yosuga grinned from ear to ear and answered, aloud, "Oh no, please Mado-chan, don't make me go shoe shopping!"

Yosuga stood up from the comfortable patio chair that she had been enjoying and walked over to her blonde friend. Yosuga dropped the bathrobe from her shoulders and let it fall to the patio floor, revealing her almost bare torso and the no-doubt-soon-to-be-teased-about bikini top. She then wrapped her arms around Madoka in a bear-hug, holding her friend, the sister of her heart, as tightly as she could, enjoying the warmth of the other Sekirei.

"Oh, Mado-chan, I missed you so much," Yosuga bent her head forward and rested her cheek against the top of Madoka's head. The difference between her 180cm height versus Madoka's 150cm was really obvious when they were hugging, Madoka's 5cm boot soles or no. She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of her friend's blonde hair as the wind whipped around them. Yosuga continued, "All these months since you were taken away were so lonely. It was so hard not having you near, not hearing your voice, not having your Farspeech in my head. The only other Sekirei in Group 11 that I could trust enough to Farspeak was 57 Yahan and you know she isn't the chattiest sort of girl at the best of times."

Madoka had slipped her arms around Yosuga's slim waist and returned Yosuga's hug as hard as she could. She turned her face so her cheek was pressed against Yosuga's leather bikini top, which she finally had to say something about. "57 Yahan? Did the sister of my heart finally find someone to unthaw her? That explains your clothing then. Inspired by Yahan's penchant for black cloth, belt buckles. Why no black cloak?"

Yosuga just grinned, rubbing her cheek against the top of Madoka's head. "Go on, I expected nothing else but to hear about my clothes. And for your information I didn't get my ideas from 57 Yahan, though I will grant there's some similarity between our styles. And don't think I don't spot your inquisitive nosiness about my love life, Mado-chan. As I'm sure you know, Yahan does no more for me than any other girl, or boy for that matter, in Group 11."

She could feel Madoka's pout against her skin. "Well, damn, Yosu-chan. I had hoped maybe you would have someone to keep you company after I was gone. I am sorry."

Still holding on tightly to her short blonde friend, Yosuga shrugged her shoulders. "No, Mado-chan, nothing changed after you were taken, as far as my love life goes. It can still be accurately described as 'never got it, never will', you know."

Leaning back a bit so that she could look up at Yosuga's face, Madoka smiled up at her friend's dark almond-shaped eyes and said, "Someday soon that will change, Yosu-chan. There is no way MBI messed up on your Adjustments so badly that you will not love your Ashikabi and will not want to share physical love with him. Or her!"

Leaning backwards a little herself so that it was easier to meet Madoka's sky-blue eyes, Yosuga pasted on a smile and sighed. This was a well-known pain for her. After her Puberty Adjustment, she had been wracked with headaches and body tremors for so long that it was obvious something had gone wrong. By the time the headaches had been mostly resolved, after dozens of more Adjustments, it became obvious to Yosuga, and her best friend Madoka, that there was more wrong than just the headaches. Yosuga never felt one iota of sexual desire all through her adolescence in the dorms. Not an attraction to boys, not an attraction to girls, not even any interest in self-exploration.

Once, she forced herself to try to have sex with Madoka, after months of seeing her friend regularly sharing intimacy with 16 Toyotama and occasionally with 18 Ichiya. Yosuga felt that even if she didn't _feel_ the desire for such play she could still _do_ the same things the other girls were doing and make her heart's sister happy.

Well, that had turned out to be a very bad idea. In truth it had been a complete disaster that ended with weeping and hurt feelings on everyone's part. It had taken weeks for the two to recover from it.

This abnormality, coupled with her small breasts (extremely small for a Sekirei, only a B-cup!), a face most accurately described as "plain", and a figure that Yosuga felt was more boyish than feminine, all gave Yosuga a very cynical view on matters of love, sex, and Ashikabi. She feared she would never find an Ashikabi, denied the love of a mate since she was denied any desire for mating.

Madoka knew this and had always insisted that was not to be Yosuga's fate.

Yosuga hoped her friend was right, but she wasn't going to bet on it. She put aside the old familiar pain and kissed Madoka's forehead, "Maybe so, Mado-chan. Maybe finding my Ashikabi will fix what MBI broke, eh? Now, if you are finished with teasing me about my outfit maybe you can show me how we can get food delivered to this room so I don't starve and then you can tell me the story of how you met your Ashikabi!"

Madoka's clear laughter accompanied another hug and then she stepped back from her tall friend. "Yosu-chan dearest, if you think you are getting away that easily about your clothes, after all the lecturing you did about how bad it would be to attract the first guy who was enticed by bouncing boobs and bare skin, you are so very sadly mistaken. So. Very. Mistaken." The little blonde grinned wickedly up at Yosuga then continued, "But! I will let it be for now and order us all room service for lunch as I too am hungry. I am also sure that Gregory-kun will be up very soon and he always wants something to eat after waking. Come on, let us go look at the room service menu."

Yosuga followed Madoka back into the hotel suite's living room with a genuine smile of happiness on her face. She reached out with her Farspeech, slightly rusty after so many months of not having anyone other than 57 Yahan to bespeak. _{I so missed you MadokaSisterOfMyHeart. I feel I could burst from happiness now that we are back together, all my fears and loneliness of the last months fading away in the happy glow of your company.  
#LoveAndAffectionAndFinallyEasingLoneliness!}_

Madoka smiled back over her shoulder at Yosuga and sent _{And I am pleased to have you here with me at last, YosugaSisterOfMyHeart. I have ever so much to tell you and much to share with you. I am also very glad to have someone I can Farspeak with again! It feels like forever since I could bespeak anyone. During that time I felt as though I were cut off from my roots, my people. It is as if we who can speak mind to mind are a people apart but I never realized it until I could only use my physical voice for so many months.}_

 _{#ShockAndDisbelief. You cannot bespeak your Ashikabi, MadokaSister?}_

Madoka shook her head and handed Yosuga one of the room service lunchtime menus before picking up one for herself. Madoka began making a list of what to order, writing down each item on the pad of paper next to the phone on the suite's wet bar. Yosuga began looking for what she wanted to add to the order for herself.

Madoka's always-disciplined and correctly structured Farspeech answered Yosuga's jumbled and disbelieving question, _{No, YosugaSister, I have never managed to Farspeak Gregory-kun. Only a few isolated sendings of emotions. We have had some other connections between our minds that have nothing to do with Farspeech and everything to do with my healing ability, which you and I will speak of later. Gregory's talents do not lie in metapsychic abilities, so that makes Farspeech difficult. Now that you are here perhaps I will try with him more; I had not realized how much I missed it.}_

(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)  
(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)

 _ **From the notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell**_

 _ **Sekirei**_

 _44 Shijushi Yosuga:_ Yosuga is a fighting type who uses a pair of sai as her weapon of choice. She says she chose the sai because the art of sai fighting, called Ryukyu Kobujutsu, fits with her special Sekirei physical gifts.  
Unlike most of the fighting type Sekirei, Yosuga is not physically stronger than a very fit normal Terran human. Instead of having great physical strength Yosuga's Sekirei abilities manifest themselves in the form of great speed.  
Her hand to eye coordination is unbelievable and she can move parts of her body at speeds far beyond what I have ever seen anyone manage. Standing 3 feet away from her I held a baseball in each hand at shoulder height out to the side and then dropped them simultaneously. Before they hit the ground she had grabbed both out of the air.  
Any feats of coordination and speed of hands she can perform at incredible levels. She can strike with her sai, one in each hand, 10 hard strikes per second and keep that pace up for more than a minute without strain.  
I've yet to get her on a track to test her running speed or had the chance to determine how she manages to leap as many as 10 stories up at a time (which should be impossible no matter how strong her legs are for a variety of reasons).  
Obviously, more measured research into the supposedly physical Sekirei is needed.

 _ **On Metapsychics**_

 **Metapsychic Functions**

 _Farsense_ _(New Information):_ Any metapsychic Operant who has the ability to use Farsense (and as far as we can tell all operants have _some_ degree of Farsense; it is the most basic and common metafunction) can use the Farsense metafunction to communicate to other operants. The term for this is Farspeech.  
The Farsense metafunction has a secondary manifestation that has little to do with emulating any of the traditional 5 Senses. This isn't "speaking" by vocalizing more loudly than a set of physical vocal cords can manage. Nor is it super-hearing, allowing someone to hear a whisper from miles away. Instead, Farspeech is classic, simple, mind-to-mind communicative telepathy.  
One might assume that more than "Farspeech" this might be "Farhearing", as that would stick to the model of enhanced senses, enhanced beyond the limits of reason even, that is so convenient for the other Farsense manifestations. It is simple for us to understand "Farsight", since we all have eyes and can see normally. We simply think of it in terms of a "super" version of our already understood sense. Is "Farspeech" instead really "Farhearing", where a metapsychic sensitives is _hearing_ someone's desire to communicate (in the same "super" sense that Farsight is _seeing_ something beyond the eye's ability to perceive)?  
From what few tests we have been able to perform so far, it would appear that it is extraordinarily difficult for a metapsychic operant to send Farspeech to a latent. And _impossible_ to send Farspeech to an inoperant. This strongly implies that there is _some_ aspect of the receiver's metapsychic ability being worked in order for Farspeech communication to function.  
As Farspeech originating from a latent or inoperant is also impossible (as far as we know), it may be that both the sender _and_ receiver are utilizing their Farsense metafunction in order to communicate.  
Testing regimes for establishing range, interference media, and other limitations and features need to be established and testing begun in order to quantify this metafunction (which was almost entirely neglected by MBI, even more so than the Farsight manifestation of Farsense).

(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)  
(◣_◢)NGFOM 5.1(◣_◢)

 _Publication Note: Book 5's chapters will be posted as they are completed instead of all together as the previous 4 books were published. Chapter 14 is completed and being edited currently so it should be posted within a week of when Chapter 13 was posted._

 _Started July 19, 2015_  
 _Resumed Oct 1, 2015_  
 _Completed Oct 3, 2015_  
 _Posted Nov 3, 2015_


	14. Bk5 - Ch2 Lunch with Yosuga

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 5.2 – "Lunch with Yosuga"

o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o  
o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o

Sunday, February 23rd, 2020  
Roppongi district, Minato Ward, Shin Tokyo  
The Tokyo Grand Hyatt

Gregory O'Donnell woke slowly with the feeling that surely he had not slept enough. The bed he was sleeping in was comfortable - very comfortable - as he expected of the Tokyo Grand Hyatt. The pillow had the scent of his beautiful Madoka still on it but the spot next to him where she normally would be sleeping was no longer warm. The lights were off, the temperature in the room was just right, and the windows covered. What was it that woke him up?

{ _And I am so very happy to have you here with me at last, YosugaSisterOfMyHeart._ }

 _Mado?_

Gregory lifted his head from the pillow and looked around the dimly lit hotel room but did not see his Sekirei anywhere.

{ _I have ever so much to tell you and much to share with you. I am also very glad to have someone I can Farspeak with again!_ }

Farspeak? Is that why it sounded like Mado, because it was Mado using "Farspeak" to talk to Shijushi Yosuga? Gregory realized he couldn't "hear" anything from Yosuga, only Mado's mental voice.

"Great, just great. Not only will I get to listen to the two of them gossiping and catching up, even when I'm in the other room, but I'll only get half the conversation!" Gregory's muttered complaint went unanswered.

Gregory glanced at his cell-watch and noted that it was just after noon so he had managed seven hours of sleep even if he did feel a bit groggy still. Time to get up and get going. Lord only knew how long it was going to take to get Shijushi Yosuga settled today. There was a lot to tell the girl and a lot for the girl to decide for herself, like where she was going to live while searching out her Ashikabi.

Trying to ignore the mental speech of Mado chattering about what to order for room service, Gregory dragged his tired carcass out of the comfortable bed, stumbled into the suite's decadent bath, and got ready to face the day. He hoped Madoka ordered him Belgian waffles…

o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o

The three chose to have their lunch out on the balcony, which had plenty of seating and tables for an outdoor meal. It was windy up here on the 23rd floor but the sun was shining and the temperature was mild for late February.

Once they had taken seats around the low patio table Madoka was kept busy making sure everyone had the proper food that she had ordered for them. Drinks as well; coffee for herself and Gregory, hot tea for Yosuga. She knew from years of friendship with Yosuga that the other Sekirei had never acquired a taste for coffee and preferred tea with her meals. The dark-haired girl also preferred traditional Japanese cuisine so Madoka had made sure to order plenty of udon and sashimi to go along with the western food she and Gregory preferred.

When she saw Gregory's eyes light up happily at the plate of Belgian waffles that she slid in front of him, she offered him a bottle of dark, thick, syrup. "Genuine maple, Gregory-kun."

From his seat at the table, Gregory leaned over to take the bottle from her and then he set it next to his plate. "I love you Mado-chan. You're the best, seriously. _You_ understand the importance of genuine maple syrup. You're not one of those vile 'maple _flavored_ syrup' people!"

She returned his smile, happy that her Ashikabi was happy. She had stressed to room service that they were to bring _genuine maple syrup_ with the waffles. And if they didn't have it then she would order something other than waffles. They assured her that the Tokyo Grand Hyatt only served the _very best_ and that included their selection of waffle and pancake toppings.

Since her Ashikabi had an almost unhealthy love of pancakes and waffles, she knew she could not go wrong ordering them for him, even if it was lunchtime. As long as the room service people made good on their promise of genuine maple syrup!

Tucking her blonde hair behind her ears to keep it from blowing into her face in the strong breeze, Madoka settled in at the table. Madoka then made sure she had everything she'd ordered for herself. Seeing that all was well she looked over at Yosuga then laughed at her dark haired friend's baffled expression. "What is it, Yosu-chan? It is a lot of food, I admit, but the food service here is just so good you will have no problem finishing everything we ordered. Trust me on that."

Yosuga - her long, straight hair pulled back in a simple ponytail to stay out of her soup - was just starting on her tuna sashimi on rice while eyeing the nabeyaki udon bowl that was waiting for her attention next. While there _was_ a great deal of food on the patio table and all of it smelled delicious, it was not the food that had caused Yosuga's bewildered expression.

"No, Mado-chan, the food is fine. I just never expected to see you setting a lunch table and making sure your mate had his favorite foods. Nor ever expected to see you glowing with happiness about it." Yosuga's smile removed any possible offense from her statement though Madoka felt her cheeks warm from embarrassment in spite of herself.

"Mah, Yosu-chan. No teasing me in front of my Ashikabi!" Madoka joined her friend in laughing, happy to see Gregory also found the atmosphere relaxed as he chuckled along with them. Madoka said, "Though you are right; I would not have guessed at how happy I could be just doing simple things like having a late breakfast from room service and making sure my Ashikabi has his favorite dish for his meal. I even caught myself enjoying cleaning the kitchen last week. It was bizarre and strange. It scared me. I cried for hours."

Gregory laughed, set down his silverware to pick up the coffee carafe, and then poured himself a cup. As he stirred creamer into the coffee he looked across the table at Yosuga and said, "Shijushi-san, don't believe it for a minute. She's pulling your leg; Mado-chan has never once enjoyed cleaning the kitchen. Unless grumbling and complaining when it's your turn is a way of voicing your happiness, dear?"

Madoka - still blushing - reached over and swatted Gregory's arm. "Hush, you. I _said_ it was bizarre." She busied herself arranging the quartered club sandwich and the piping hot croque monsieur she had ordered for her own lunch. The two sandwiches did not want to fit on the single plate so she pretended all of her attention was occupied by her food.

Gregory picked up the conversation in order to give Madoka a chance to regain her composure. "So, Shijushi-san, last night when we picked you up, were you yelling at me in German?"

Yosuga covered her face with her hands in embarrassment and Madoka laughed softly, hand covering her mouth politely. Yosuga answered, "Yes, it was. I'm sorry, I didn't really mean to yell. It was a difficult situation is all! Though, Gregory-san, please, call me Yosuga. I keep wondering who you are talking to when you say 'Shijushi-san'. Our fake family names weren't even known by us until they released us into the city, so it wasn't until this week I had even heard that 'Shijushi' was my name."

Gregory smiled at the dark-haired Sekirei and nodded his understanding. "Very well, no problem, Yosuga-san. I get it about last night, I really do. That was a crazy scene at the train station. I can't imagine how scary it must have been for you to be thrown into something like that immediately after being released by MBI."

Nodding her head as she picked her chopsticks back up Yosuga agreed. "It was very scary actually. I don't make a habit of screaming ' _schnell! schnell!_ ' at people in normal circumstances, I promise."

All three laughed at that and then Gregory asked, "So, you learned German while in the MBI Sekirei Labs? What inspired that?"

When Gregory noticed that Yosuga seemed reluctant to answer the question so he glanced at Madoka and quirked an eyebrow at her in unspoken question.

Madoka was smiling while stirring cream into a new cup of coffee for herself. She poked Yosuga's leg under the table with her big toe and teased, "Come on, Yosu-chan. Explain to Gregory-kun how you ended up with German as your second language instead of English."

Gregory blinked and looked from Madoka to Yosuga and asked, "Really? You didn't learn English at all?"

Grimacing at Madoka, Yosuga answered, "No, I didn't learn English at all. Okay, here's the way it was. We were all taught Japanese, obviously. In addition to that we were all required to select one non-Japanese language to learn. Madoka chose American English and I chose German. She enjoyed languages so much that she also picked up German, just so that I would have someone to practice with. It was very sweet of her to help me with my German."

"Say again?" A surprised looking Gregory turned from Yosuga to look at Madoka. "Mado-chan? You speak German too?"

Madoka nodded and shrugged self-deprecatingly. "Yes, Gregory-kun. Learning languages was easy for me. It is no big deal."

Yosuga could see that Madoka was embarrassed and was downplaying her faculty with languages to her Ashikabi for some reason. The other Sekirei couldn't resist teasing her blonde friend, "German, Japanese, American English. How many others, Mado-chan?"

Madoka glared at Yosuga over the rim of her coffee cup and ignored the question.

With a triumphant smile Yosuga turned to Gregory and answered her own question. "Nine is how many, Gregory-san. At least she spoke nine languages last _I_ knew. Maybe she has picked up another four or five out here in the city over the previous few months?"

Her Ashikabi now staring at her made Madoka feel self-conscious. She scolded her friend, "Yosu-chan! No, I have not learned more languages. I have been busy. You brat! Stop telling my secrets and embarrassing me in front of my Ashikabi!"

Yosuga could only laugh and Gregory could only shake his head in amazement.

As he cut another of his waffles into bite sized pieces Gregory then asked, "What other languages do you speak, Mado-chan? I've been incredibly impressed with your fluency in Japanese and English. Which one you learned as a second language it's impossible to tell since you speak both with perfect fluency and with utterly natural accent. It was one of the first things I noticed when we first met and was certainly a mysterious attribute. One that intrigued me greatly, given my line of work."

Madoka shrugged and pretended to be occupied with her club sandwich. After a moment - in which she realized that Gregory was not going to just let it go - she reluctantly answered, "In addition to Japanese, American English, and German, I learned French, Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, and Thai."

"Good grief, Mado-chan!" Gregory shocked exclamation amused Yosuga and embarrassed Madoka. "Most of those aren't even related! That's like what, six completely different languages, with entirely different linguistic roots, and three more that are only technically related? Most people - if they set out to learn more than one new language - stick to similar languages because it is much easier. Like, they'll learn French, then also Italian, and then Spanish, and then Portuguese. Then they can claim they learned four languages but with much less effort than learning four completely unrelated languages."

Yosuga looked up from her bowl of udon and nodded slowly. "That makes sense. The only other Sekirei in Group 11 who learned more than the minimum required languages stuck to related ones like you mentioned. They did that because it's a lot easier then?"

"Right, just so, Yosuga-san," Gregory answered. He continued, "But, Mado-chan, you've got English, German, and Russian, which are all Indo-European languages but they've got very damn little in common with each other in spite of that so it's a huge stretch to say they are related enough to make them easier to learn once you've got one of them."

Gregory reached for the coffee carafe to top off his coffee and continued as he poured, "Then the two most spoken Chinese dialects, Cantonese and Mandarin? _And_ two Romance languages, French and Italian, so I'd bet you could get by in Spanish and Portuguese. Plus Japanese as fluent as any native. And Thai atop all that? Thai? Sure, there's 65 million people in Thailand who speak it but the roots of Thai are completely separate from Japanese or Chinese so learning it is as difficult as learning a completely new language."

Madoka nodded reluctantly. She really did not care to look like a studious geek but there was no helping it in this case she realized. Language _was_ Gregory's profession and she'd known that this would come out eventually.

"It was easy for me to learn languages, Gregory-kun, so it was my hobby in the dorms. That's all it was. I learned all of the languages any of the other Sekirei in Group 11 learned. 57 Yahan loved movies and documentaries about beaches so she fell in love with Thailand. Since she chose Thai to learn in addition to American English I learned it with her. 57 Yahan was always nice to me and Yosu-chan so helping her with Thai was something I could do to repay her kindness."

Yosuga nodded agreement with Madoka's description of events. "It's true it was her hobby. I doubt she'd have studied so much with it if it wasn't something that came to her naturally. Our Mado-chan was the least academically inclined Sekirei in all of Group 11. I think she was allergic to reading if it didn't have to do with learning a new language."

With a scowl on her beautiful face Madoka tried to redirect everyone's attention to the other Sekirei. "Come on, Yosu-chan. Tell Gregory-kun _why_ you chose German for your second language. I am positive he would like to hear that story."

This time it was Yosuga's turn to look at her plate and pretend to be too busy to answer a question. Madoka smiled at her friend's embarrassed expression.

"It can't be that bad, Yosuga-san," Gregory put in. "Why did you choose German? After all, it's not terribly common in this part of the world. I understand there was a lot of influence from Prussia during the Meiji Restoration and of course there was World War 2, but…"

Yosuga mumbled something in reply but Madoka wasn't going to let her get away with that. Madoka prodded, "What was that, Yosu-chan? We could not quite hear you."

"Gah, fine!" Yosuga faced Gregory and held her chin up defiantly. She said, in as dignified manner as she could manage, "I chose German because at the age we were when we had to choose I was convinced that if I knew German I would have a better chance of getting my own Jaeger Mech to pilot once we were free from MBI."

Gregory's expression was priceless, causing Madoka to crack up first. Soon all three were wiping tears from their eyes from laughing so hard.

Gregory wiped his face and noted, "It must have been quite a disappointment to find out there are no giant mecha of any kind, much less Jaeger Mechs."

Yosuga shrugged, still looking embarrassed, and answered, "Yes, it was. But that's okay! I've made it my life's mission to engineer the first practical workable Jaeger Mech! Someday, someday, I promise, I will stomp through Shin Tokyo's streets at the helm of a 250-foot tall engine of death and destruction! Then we'll see who's laughing!"

Madoka almost fell out of her chair, laughing.

o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o

All three then devoted most of their attention to the delicious lunch that had been prepared for them. Once the worst of his hunger had been blunted by the waffles and maple syrup Gregory poured himself a bit more coffee then offered to top off Madoka's cup as well. She shook her head so he set the carafe down and then he looked across the table at dark-haired Sekirei who'd joined them last night.

"So, Yosuga-san, to business. There's a lot of information Madoka wants to make sure you have before you have to make any decisions about where you're going next and what you want to do. Since we need to be back at our apartment by at least 7pm because I must be at work in the morning we should make this a 'working lunch', if that's okay with you."

Yosuga - having returned to her tuna sashimi after having finished the udon bowl - nodded her assent so Gregory opened his Notebook and started flipping through it looking for a particular page. Madoka was now tapping on her phone screen as well, no doubt looking for her own notes.

"Mado-chan," Gregory noted, "it occurs to me that we forgot one rather obvious thing we could have done ahead of time that would make things easier."

"What is that, Gregory-kun?"

"We could have already made a list of everything a friendly newly released Sekirei needs to know. We could have even had it already printed out and just hand the pamphlet to her so she could read everything we think she needs to know at her own pace. Then if she had any questions she could just ask us."

Madoka shook her head, "You are right, Gregory-kun. We should have been better prepared than this. So, next time, then."

"Just so," Gregory answered. "Well, no help for it, we'll just have to wing it with Yosuga-san here. Please take notes, Mado-chan, and make a list later of what we need to put into a New-Friend pamphlet as well as a separate Newly-Released-But-Not-Sure-If-Friend-Yet package? There's different levels of disclosure of our own plans and efforts we'd discuss depending on the level of friendship we had with the newly released Sekirei after all. Please note the time so we can go back over the audio logs of this conversation and get a transcript from both of our phones."

Gregory noticed that Yosuga looked a bit bemused at the discussion between Madoka and himself. He said, "You'll understand what we're talking about later. There's a lot of stuff to go over that MBI either didn't know or didn't care to inform you about."

The next two hours were filled with discussion of what Madoka had learned in the two and a half months she had been out in Shin Tokyo. They talked about her early December encounter with 16 Toyotama, 86 Katsuragi, and Higa Izumi. They told Yosuga about how it was possible for an Ashikabi to force a Sekirei into Wing Bonding against her will and how Higa seemed to be doing so with multiple Sekirei to build up an irresistible force. They discussed how Higa's subordinate - Kakizaki - had winged 22 Kochou and the brain-type Sekirei was giving Kakizaki, and thus Higa, inside information about the release schedule and locations of Sekirei.

They stressed how Kochou was how Yosuga had been ambushed by Higa's Sekirei 18 Ichiya and 31 Sai as soon as she'd stepped out of the automated MBI mini-bus at the Ochanomizu Rail Station last night. 22 Kochou's access to MBI's information systems, imperfect though that access might be, was a game changer for the entire Sekirei Plan. A factor MBI had failed to calculate when putting together the Sekirei Plan and establishing the enforcement mechanisms behind the Plan.

They also told Yosuga about Madoka's encounter with 16 Toyotama in January. They explained what they had learned about how on that day in January Toyotama was actually seeking the newly released 48 Kujika but she had apparently fortunately avoided capture.

Yosuga was very saddened by the tale of their mutual friend 86 Katsuragi and the unhappy fate that had befallen the quiet, shy, girl. Yosuga also had sympathy for Madoka about what happened to 16 Toyotama as well. Yosuga knew better than anyone else exactly what the relationship between Madoka and Toyotama had been.

Yosuga kept her opinions to herself for now but she held Madoka's hand and made the appropriate sympathetic noises during the recounting of that terrifying afternoon.

Gregory noticed Yosuga's reserve over the subject of 16 Toyotama and made himself a mental note to speak to Yosuga as soon as practical about the former relationship between Madoka and Toyotama in the Group 11 Dorms. Gregory had a lot of anger that had built up, anger aimed at MBI and their so-called Researchers, from when Madoka had told him of that part of her life. The way she had described her adolescence came across like a Russian Women's Prison more than any life for teenagers in a civilized country.

Yosuga helped their own notes by adding information about the two Sekirei who tried to grab her last night at the Ochanomizu rail station. Just a week before Yosuga had been released for the First Phase of the Sekirei Plan, 18 Ichiya had been taken out of Group 11 to be released into Shin Tokyo to find her own Ashikabi. Ichiya had said that she intended to look in the east of Shin Tokyo for her friend, 16 Toyotama. Ichiya hinted that she had received a message telling her that was where she could find her friend.

"Well, I think we can assume she did indeed find 16 Toyotama," Gregory said. "And it would appear that Higa did indeed Wing Bond 18 Ichiya. God only knows how many Sekirei he has by now. We know for certain that he has 16 Toyotama, 18 Ichiya, 31 Sai, 86 Katsuragi, and 101 Oriha. All wing bonded to him personally. He also has access to other Sekirei such as 22 Kochou due to having influence over other Ashikabi. It wouldn't surprise me if he had other Ashikabi under his influence, granting him access to even more Sekirei though it's unclear how dedicated those would be to his cause."

Madoka looked terribly guilty and buried her face in her hands. "Aie! I should have sent a warning to Ichiya! The same way I sent Yosu-chan my phone number I could have warned Ichiya against looking for Toyotama! It is my fault Ichi-chan is bonded to that terrible man now!"

Yosuga spoke up in disagreement, "Mado-chan, you aren't at fault. Even if you had managed to get such a warning to Ichiya-san - which is not a guaranteed thing itself - she would have ignored it. She would have had no reason to believe any warnings saying Toyotama and her Ashikabi were dangerous. She'd have assumed such a warning was more gamesmanship and part of your Ashikabi's efforts in the Sekirei Plan. For those of us who were held back to be released later there was nothing but rumor and gossip about such ploys for the last few months. So, Mado-chan, understand that nothing was going to stop Ichi-chan from searching out Toyotama. You know that, Mado-chan. They were friends for too long, just like you and me."

"Do you think Ichiya joined them voluntarily?" Madoka looked unconvinced, worried that she could have done something to warn Ichiya away from Higa and Toyotama.

Yosuga shrugged and then sighed, "I don't know, Mado-chan. She could have. Ichiya followed Toyotama in everything. If Toyotama met with her after Ichiya's release and told her about her wonderful Ashikabi and how she wanted Ichiya to be with her in his service… Ichiya would have been glad to let this Higa Izumi guy kiss her, whether she was having a strong reaction to him or not. She wouldn't have known what kind of guy Higa Izumi really is and a note supposedly from you wouldn't have convinced her over Toyotama's endorsement of the guy. Besides supposedly the more Sekirei an Ashikabi has the stronger the Ashikabi becomes. Even if Higa Izumi wasn't a perfect match for Ichiya-san she very well could have reacted to him due to how many Sekirei he had already winged and how strong an Ashikabi that's made him by now."

Madoka nodded. The picture Yosuga painted matched with what Madoka knew of Ichiya and her relationship with Toyotama. Number 16 chose the direction and the route, number 18 supported her and went along. That was how they had been their whole lives in Group 11.

Gregory asked, "Yosuga-san, what was that about Ashikabi being more powerful with more Sekirei wing bonded to them?"

"Just one of the things we'd heard over the years," Yosuga explained. "There wasn't a lot of solid information about how Ashikabi and Sekirei worked so there were always rumors and such about the process. One that was fairly well known was that the more Sekirei an Ashikabi had the stronger that made him as an Ashikabi."

Gregory looked over at Madoka and raised an eyebrow.

Madoka shook her head and answered his unasked question, "No, I do not remember hearing that one but I never paid as much attention to such things as Yosu-chan did. It does make sense with what we know now about the way a Sekirei increases the Ashikabi's Metapsychic Power Rating. It makes sense that the Sekirei's Bonus To Ashikabi would be cumulative."

"Another example," Gregory speculated, "of information MBI _could_ have had and _could_ have planned for but didn't? Because it's pretty obvious that they never considered the likelihood of Ashikabi establishing a Wing Bond with multiple Sekirei. Especially to the degree that Higa Izumi is doing so."

Yosuga agreed with that observation. "When you consider that the entirety of the Sekirei Plan's enforcement falls upon the Disciplinary Squad, which was supposed to be just one Sekirei, 04 Karasuba but then in January they came through and picked up 104 Haihane and 105 Benitsubasa to add to the Squad, it seems likely that MBI originally thought one single-digit Sekirei would be enough force to keep any problematic Sekirei and her Ashikabi in line. But by January they realized that at least one Ashikabi, this Higa Izumi guy, had acquired enough Sekirei that even a single digit like 04 Karasuba couldn't be entirely confident of defeating in a fight. So they added two more Sekirei to the Disciplinary Squad at the last minute in order to make it far more powerful a force. When they took 104 and 105 out of Group 11 rumor had it that they were going for special "Adjustments" to eliminate whatever MBI did to all of us to limit our powers, too."

Madoka looked worried at that observation. "That would make this so-called 'Disciplinary Squad' a very dangerous entity then. Especially given that 105 Benitsubasa was always short tempered and difficult at best. If she was given authority and was made stronger by special Adjustments she would be a walking time-bomb, just waiting to go off."

Gregory jotted down a line in the Notebook to query both Madoka and Yosuga more in depth about this Disciplinary Squad later. It appeared that Madoka had not heard of this group of Sekirei Plan enforcers yet Yosuga had. If that was a pattern, if it was common that Madoka had paid less attention to issues involving the Sekirei Plan and Yosuga had paid more, then Yosuga would be a priceless source of new information. Information that Gregory, Madoka, and their allies, desperately needed.

Moving on for now they talked to Yosuga about how to best use her MBI Platinum Card and about how to acquire a cell phone that MBI would not be likely to compromise. They spoke about why she needed to feed MBI inaccurate information about where she was, where she spent her time, and what she was doing. They explained why this was important and why simply "going off the grid" would never work against an organization with MBI's resources.

Yosuga surprised Gregory with how much she already knew. She already knew about the 500,000¥ per day limit in withdrawing cash from ATMs and had already planned to use that function of the cards to build up emergency funds. When Gregory asked how she learned of such things, Yosuga explained that MBI had briefed all of them on the basics regarding the MBI Platinum Cards and about how to use them to survive in the city until they found their Ashikabi. MBI had not pointed out how the cards could best be used by the Sekirei - for instance they didn't mention how storing up cash reserves for emergencies was a good idea - but they had at least gone over how the cards worked and what could be done with them.

Gregory turned to look at Madoka, confused by the fact that she knew little or nothing of how to survive in the city when she was newly released by MBI. Madoka wouldn't meet his gaze. Instead she pretended to be fascinated by her lunch.

"Mado-chan?"

"Okay, okay! Yes, Gregory-kun, I slept though most of the briefings and lectures! They were boring!"

Gregory shook his head in disbelief as Yosuga laughed and Madoka scowled at her lunch plate.

They discussed again how it was 22 Kochou and her ability to get information from MBI's networks that was allowing Higa the ability to set up ambushes for newly released Sekirei. This weakness of MBI's information networks meant the other Sekirei and Ashikabi needed to do their best to keep their own information away from MBI.

Anything MBI knew about them they could assume Higa and his Sekirei knew as well. And what Higa Izumi knew other Ashikabi might know as well. And that was a very dangerous situation to be in.

"Why would 22 Kochou do this?" Yosuga asked. "We never met the girl. She has no reason to do things like this, to have us hunted down!"

Gregory shook his head and looked out over the darkening city of Shin Tokyo. "Yosuga-san, you do not understand the strength of the bond between an Ashikabi and his Sekirei. 22 Kochou's Ashikabi is this bootlicker, Kakizaki. And since Kakizaki wants to serve Higa Izumi then it would seem that 22 Kochou will do whatever she is ordered to do to help Higa Izumi."

Yosuga looked at Madoka and saw agreement there. As far as Madoka was concerned Gregory was describing the situation accurately.

"It's a terrible situation," Gregory continued. "That Sekirei could be forced into Wing Bonds with Ashikabi who are hateful and abusive probably comes as a shock to many newly released Sekirei. But that's the reality of the Sekirei Plan, regardless of whatever fairy tale MBI convinced itself and the Sekirei of."

Yosuga looked stricken and looked again to Madoka, searching her little blonde friend's face for confirmation of what Gregory was telling her. When Madoka only nodded and sighed sadly, Yosuga looked ready to cry. She might have little in the way of grandiose dreams of romance and eternal happiness with an Ashikabi but hearing such news was still a blow.

A somber expression on her face, Yosuga let out a sigh and looked away from the balcony at the evening-lit city below. After a moment she said, "Then it really is dangerous for me, or any Sekirei, to spend very much time searching for an Ashikabi. If we spend too long searching for a perfect match we could end up forced into a Wing Bond with some bastard like Higa Izumi or his bootlicker."

"Pretty much," Gregory agreed. "How much risk is hard to tell. In the First Phase there _shouldn't_ be any attacks out in public since it's a high priority for MBI to keep the Sekirei Plan secret until the Second Phase. However, as you've seen with Higa's Sekirei who ambushed you at the train station, that idea isn't working entirely. We've met other Ashikabi and Sekirei who are more peaceful and cooperative than Higa's group, but you never know what you're going to run into."

Madoka added, "Practicing your Farsight so you can sense when other Sekirei are nearby would help in keeping you safe if you are out in the city searching for your Ashikabi."

"Great," Yosuga complained. "The one ability I've never been any good at!"

"I will help you get better at it," Madoka promised her friend. "It just takes practice, Yosu-chan."

o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o  
o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o

After the remains of lunch were cleared away Yosuga retired to the suite's bathroom to take a shower and relax in a hot bath. Gregory was on the patio loveseat with a bottle of diet coke and a cigarette. Madoka joined him and took one of his cigarettes from the pack on the low table in front of them. She lit the cigarette with his lighter, the flame flickering wildly in the strong breeze.

"You really shouldn't smoke, you know," he couldn't resist mentioning.

As usual she shrugged and dismissed his concerns with an airy wave of her hand. "Well, Gregory-kun, if I live long enough to get emphysema you can say you told me so."

He could only sigh in reply to that. She had a point.

With the sun at the horizon and the wind constant on the 23rd floor balcony Gregory had already added a sweater over the cotton button up shirt that he'd worn for lunch. Madoka wore a sweater as well, hers being thigh-length and with an overlarge faux-turtleneck. He put his arm around her shoulders and she snuggled up against him. The two sat quietly enjoying the peace and quiet and the view of Shin Tokyo spread out in front of them for miles in the golden, late afternoon sun.

"Since Yosuga is in the bath and we have a moment of privacy," Gregory began. "I wanted to know what your plans were for her? Do you want her to stay at the apartment? I don't think we want her to know about the safe house in Ebisu yet, but it's really up to you, Mado-chan."

Madoka nodded, exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke, and then watched it whisk away in the wind. "Thank you Gregory-kun. That you trust me with decisions like this and make sure to get my opinion means a great deal to me. I know I would not be consulted in such things with many other Ashikabi I might have had."

He could only shrug at that. She was right; with how many Japanese men thought of women she would have been shut out of most important decisions. It was just the way things were in Japan even in the 21st century.

"Well, you're the one who can be terminated with just a touch and the recital of some verse," he pointed out. "If you trust her to be where we sleep then I can do no less."

Madoka answered immediately, "I do. I trust her. Until she finds her Ashikabi I do not believe there is any risk from Yosu-chan. And considering how difficult it was for me in my first week I would be more comfortable with her staying with us so that I can show her around the city some and help her get oriented at least. We will get a promise from her that if she does find her Ashikabi she will notify us immediately, before he could convince her to betray us, if that is the sort of person she ends up with. I think that would work, Gregory-kun. She would be willing to send us a text message saying 'I have found my Ashikabi'. And once she notifies us we could treat her and her new Ashikabi as any other first contact scenario?"

"Alright, Mado-chan. Talk to her and find out what she wants to do and whatever you two decide I'll go along with. That's a good idea, as well, arranging for her to text us both as soon as she Wing Bond's with an Ashikabi, no matter who it is. Then, like you said, we can use our First Contact protocol for meeting her and her Ashikabi. Though, I gotta say, if we are staying at the apartment instead of the safe house all through the week, it's going to cut into our together time."

"Meh, Gregory-kun. I am _not_ sleeping in Mishi's room with Yosu-chan while you sleep alone all week. Maybe for the first night, just so she feels comfortable and she and I can stay up late and talk girl talk. But you are just going to have to get used to the idea that you and I share a bed now, wherever we happen to be sleeping. If we are sleeping at the apartment then you and I are sleeping, _together_ , at the apartment. That is just the way of things now. It is time to accept that."

The finality in her tone of voice left Gregory little room to argue. He sighed and then nodded, giving into the inevitable. Besides, with March coming up and that being the last month of the academic year he would be very busy with school, leaving him little extra time for trips to the safe house during the week. He might as well just accept that they'd be living at the O'Donnell apartment for the next month and accepting Madoka into the master bedroom bed as well.

After all he wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of sleeping alone for most of the next month either.

o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o  
o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o

Gregory finished washing his hands and grabbed the plush hand-towel hanging near the sink. Appreciating anew how luxurious the bathroom in the Grand Hyatt suite was, he was broken out of his reverie by an insistent knock on the bathroom door. Madoka's voice came through the thick wood door, "Gregory-kun! Hurry up!"

Tossing the hand towel onto the sink counter he then turned to open the door, "Okay, good grief, I was only in here a minute. Pushy, pushy!"

Grinning at his little blonde Sekirei as she entered the bathroom and when she then turned to push him out the door Gregory held up his hands, "I'm going, I'm going!" She shut the door behind him and he chuckled and then went to the suite's living room area where Shijushi Yosuga was waiting alongside Gregory and Madoka's packed bags.

Picking up his wallet, keys, and his phone from the coffee table Gregory asked Yosuga, "So, Yosuga-san, did you decide what you wanted to do as far as a place to stay?"

Yosuga nodded. "Yes, Gregory-san. Mado-chan said she'd like me to stay with you two at your apartment and of the options pointed out to me that sounds like the best one for now. If you're sure it's okay with you?"

"Of course, it's fine. You're more than welcome," Gregory assured her. "I don't think Mado-chan would invite just anyone from Group 11 to stay at our home but she assures me that she trusts you more than any of the other Sekirei. You'll have to remind us if we slip into speaking English. Mostly we use Japanese but sometimes we slip into English."

She nodded and said, "I will, don't worry. I should have learned English like most of the others. But making silly choices when we are young is a common experience for Sekirei and humans alike I think."

Gregory smiled his agreement and leaned against the corner of the couch. He made himself comfortable and looked over the tall, lean Sekirei that Madoka had been so eager to have back as her friend.

Yosuga and Madoka could not look more different from each other. Where Madoka was short, curvy, feminine, blonde, creamy of complexion, and had a face that you could never forget, Yosuga was tall and lanky with classic Asian straight black hair and golden skin with a pink undertone that was a few shades darker than was typical for Japanese people. Her face was not unattractive but she was not exactly pretty either. "Plain" would perhaps be the word Gregory would use. Maybe better than plain. Whatever word would fit between plain and pretty. Her almond-shaped dark-brown eyes were attractive but they were her best facial feature.

Thanks to the revealing outfit Yosuga wore - hiphugging leather pants and a small, black-leather bikini top - he could appreciate how fit she was and she absolutely had a certain amount of sex-appeal due to her trim, athletic build.

He observed that she had a pair of silvery sai sticking out of the top of her knee-high leather boots, one on each side. That answered his curiosity about whether she carried her weapons and how she did so.

Gregory belatedly realized that she was looking _him_ over with just as much evaluation in her eyes as he no doubt showed in looking _her_ over.

She said, "You're not what I expected for Mado-chan's Ashikabi."

Gregory snorted his amusement at that statement. He said, "Yeah, you could say that again and be right twice. No, Yosuga-san, I'm not what Mado-chan should have had as her Ashikabi. Not in any way. I don't deserve her, not in the least, and the fact that she was forced into circumstances that made me her best choice is an offense against her that I plan on beating the hell out of both Higa Izumi _and_ Hiroto Minaka for." By the end of that he was scowling fiercely, which seemed to convince Yosuga that he meant what he said.

She frowned and then pounced on something he'd said, "Forced into? How was she forced to take you as her Ashikabi?"

Gregory held up both hands, gesturing for Yosuga to calm. "It's not what it sounds like. I didn't force her into anything. It was circumstance that forced us both; circumstance engendered by Higa Izumi and his Sekirei not unlike what you experienced last night. If you want the whole story you'll have to ask Mado-chan. It's her story to tell, really. Though you should know that I would never force her into anything, at all."

Mollified by Gregory's firm declaration of innocence Yosuga took a deep breath and plunged ahead, pointing out another aspect of Madoka's Ashikabi that she had noticed but hadn't been brought up at lunch. "I also never would have guessed she would have an Ashikabi who was married."

Gregory glanced at his left hand to make sure he hadn't somehow worn his wedding band again after the decision he'd made to stop wearing it when Karen had left. The ring finger was still bare so he looked up at Yosuga, meeting her eyes from across the room.

Realizing that he had given himself away by checking his wedding ring finger - and he figured lying to Madoka's friend about the subject was pointless anyway - Gregory nodded and admitted, "Yes, I am married. I've been married for twenty years, actually. We have two children; Mark, who is 20 and stayed in the States when we moved to Japan five years ago, and Mishi, who is 16 and has been here with us since she was 11. My wife, Karen, left Japan in December and returned to the States. They are living in our New Hampshire home where both of our families live nearby."

Gregory looked down at his bare ring finger and frowned introspectively, continuing, "You could best describe our marital status as 'separated'. Karen, Mark, and Mishi no longer speak to me other than yelling at me and sending me long, angry, accusative emails occasionally."

He scowled and concluded, "And before you ask, yes, my wife left because of my involvement with Mado-chan. Or… that was the catalyst for the separation. Obviously, I couldn't tell her about the Sekirei Plan and at that time Mado-chan and I were not lovers, only newly bonded Ashikabi and Sekirei. In fact, we had only kissed the one time, the night she Wing Bonded to me and that wasn't by any real desired choice on either of our parts. Circumstances put us in a situation where that was the only thing we could do. But my wife became convinced that I was having an affair with Mado-chan so she took our daughter and she left me. If we weren't Catholic it's entirely likely she would have filed for divorce. But we are, so we're simply separated."

Yosuga picked at the waistband leather strings of her pants, seemingly embarrassed at having put Gregory on the spot like that on what was obviously a difficult subject. After a moment she asked, "Why are you so willing to let me stay at your home? I expected Mado-chan's Ashikabi to be concerned with winning the Sekirei Plan and looking at all of the other Sekirei as enemies."

He shook his head and shifted where he was leaning against the side of the couch. "No, not me, Yosuga-san. Moreover, I don't think most Ashikabi will be inclined to buy into MBI's insane 'fight fight fight until only one remains' Sekirei Plan no matter what amazing prize might be offered. Especially without defining what that prize is, in detail. _And_ with bulletproof legal arrangements to guarantee the winner will actually get the prize. Most people aren't idiots and aren't going to just trust the obviously insane Hiroto Minaka to deliver on vague promises. No, with the half-assed way MBI and Minaka have set this up very few Ashikabi are going to be enthusiastic about participating in the Sekirei Plan. I'd bet most will be actively trying to convince their Sekirei to not have anything to do with it."

Gregory met Yosuga's eyes when she looked up at him with an expression of surprise and doubt. He insisted, "Seriously. It's just not something most people are going to want anything to do with. Whoever at MBI thought they would find 100 random Japanese young men and women for the Sekirei to bond with and that those young people would be enthusiastic about a battle royale to the death where only one Sekirei could survive… whoever came up with that plan was an utter fucking moron. So I figure it was probably Hiroto Minaka. Everything he seems to have had his hands on after about 2005 seems to be completely insane, demonstrating a complete disconnect from reality."

Yosuga snickered at that and sounded as if she agreed with him. This puzzled Gregory; after all, Yosuga was as much a victim of MBI's brainwashing and conditioning program as Madoka was. While Madoka was no longer convinced of the Sekirei Plan, Yosuga did not have the benefit of months of an Ashikabi's influence to explain why she would be against the Sekirei Plan.

Yosuga smiled at Gregory, looking more relaxed than he had seen her yet. The honest and open expression on her face improved her somewhat plain appearance. He had the impression that in spite of her tall, lean build, her dark coloration, and a face that seemed to settle into a bit of "resting bitch-face" when she wasn't paying attention, she was the one between her and Madoka who was gregarious and outgoing.

He tried to recall Madoka's demeanor when they first met and he realized that Yosuga and Madoka were almost entirely opposite in personality than what their appearances would indicate. Madoka, with her gorgeous blue-eyes, blonde-hair, gleaming white-toothed smile and a sporty-party-girl build was actually very reserved and even introverted. It had taken quite a bit of work on his part to convince her it was worthwhile to reach out to other Sekirei and Ashikabi couples. She was _not_ sociable, in spite of what she looked like. Moreover, it looked like Yosuga was the opposite; sociable and outgoing in spite of looking like the bitchy, hardass, dark and broody sort.

Gregory thought to himself, _"She looks like 'High School of the Dead's' Saeko Busujima but she acts more like Rei Miyamoto."_

Well, she didn't have Saeko's tits. Otherwise, it was not a bad comparison.

Gregory made a note to himself to watch how others reacted to the two Sekirei and to see if others had the same preconceived notions of their likely demeanor based on their looks. It might be amusing to see how people reacted to the tall dark girl being the friendly, outgoing, one and the pretty, curvy, blonde girl being the introverted and sulky sort.

"Well, Gregory-san, I will ask her for the story of your meeting and the Wing Bonding, then. If she ever gets out of the bathroom."

Gregory grinned sardonically and nodded, "Yes, well, even though Mado-chan has the special Sekirei power of 'Every Day Is A Good Hair Day' she still takes more than her fair share of time in the facilities."

A voice called from the now-open bathroom door, "I do not either, Gregory-kun! Stop spreading false and malicious rumors behind my back, you evil Ashikabi you."

He grinned at Yosuga, who laughed in reply to his description of Madoka's super powers. Gregory turned to face his Sekirei as she walked out of the bedroom part of the suite. "So, are we ready to go, Mado-chan? Our bags are packed and we're 4 hours past check out time. Sadly MBI will have to pay for an entire extra night on this suite now, thanks to our long afternoon lunch on the balcony."

Madoka waved away any concern about MBI's expenses, "I know that such a thing only adds to your amusement, Gregory-kun. Any time you can stick it to MBI and the Professor it pleases you."

Before Madoka could continue she was interrupted by a loud beeping sound coming from her knapsack. Almost immediately her phone and Gregory's phone picked up the alert, chiming insistently as well.

Gregory and Madoka looked at each other in surprise for a moment and then Gregory lunged for the bag, unzipping it, digging through it, and then pulling out the half-forgotten Emergency Services Scanner.

Madoka was tapping through the linked-in app on her phone that allowed her to view what the scanner had detected. "Gregory-kun it looks like a multi-vehicle accident with injuries, right near the hotel."

He had managed to shut off the alarm on the scanner and was tapping through its screens, nodding agreement with her summary. "Yes, on the street to the south of the Roppongi Hills block. I bet we could see it from the balcony. Come on."

He stepped out onto the balcony and looked towards the streets far below. It was now past sunset but there were many streetlights in this district. It was easy to make out the vehicles below, even if he was 550 feet above street level.

The two Sekirei joined him and all three leaned against the balcony railing, looking for signs of the vehicle accident on the street below. Gregory made yet _another_ mental note to himself to have MBI's Platinum card buy them a couple top of the line binoculars for this sort of situation.

Yosuga spotted it first, pointing, "There!"

Gregory and Madoka looked where she pointed and, sure enough, there were many vehicles at a stop in the street. It was a three-way intersection and it looked like someone in a car had pulled out in front of a delivery truck which had been traveling at speed before the impact. Other vehicles seemed to have been involved after the initial crash but it was hard to tell how many from this far away.

Yosuga asked, "What's the importance of this? I don't understand."

Madoka replied tersely as she grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder, "I need to get down there immediately so that I can try to heal anyone who was injured. Gregory-kun, please kiss me."

Gregory nodded agreement, jolted out of his shock and reminded of the tactics they had already drawn up for this scenario. First thing, if they were where there were no witnesses, get Madoka her Norito. So he turned to his Sekirei, hugged her tight, and kissed her firmly.

Standing behind her little blonde friend, Yosuga was startled by the billowing bright yellow fluorescence of Madoka's wing flare, which surrounded Yosuga and illuminated the balcony for a long moment.

After Madoka and Gregory finished, Yosuga – now a bit wide-eyed – asked, "Mado-chan, you need to get down there immediately?"

The other Sekirei answered, "Yes, right away. We can all take the elevators. Gregory, will you take our bags to the Jeep and meet us at the accident?"

Gregory knew she was already aware that was the plan but nodded agreement anyway. "Yep, I'll join you at the scene as quickly as possible."

"Mado, why go that way? I can jump you down to the ground from here. We can jump from here to the top of that building over there," Yosuga pointed to a 12-story building next to the hotel. "From there we can jump to ground level."

Gregory and Madoka looked at each other, and then Gregory shrugged. "It's up to you, Mado-chan. It would be a lot faster. Though it will be a cold day in hell before _I_ let a skinny teenage girl pick me up and leap off a 23rd floor balcony. Just sayin'."

He thought he detected some reluctance on Madoka's face too but it disappeared quickly, buried under an expression of determination on his Sekirei's beautiful features. "Okay, Yosu-chan, let's go then. Gregory-kun, we will see you down there."

Yosuga stepped close to Madoka then bent over and picked up her friend bridal style. As soon as Madoka's hands clasped together behind Yosuga's neck the tall girl turned towards the balcony rail and leapt right over it without hesitation.

Gregory felt like he was going to have a heart attack as the two disappeared over the edge, in spite of knowing what was going to happen. Actually _seeing_ someone just _jump_ right off a balcony 550 feet above the street was _shocking_.

He went to the rail and saw the two land safely on the roof of the neighboring building. Then Yosuga jumped again, down to the street.

Shaking his head and turning away from the railing, Gregory rushed back into the suite, picked up their bags, and headed out the door.

o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o  
o.0/NGFOM 5.2\0.o

 _(The next chapter, 5.3, is about 1/3rd finished but I can't say when it will be ready to post. Expect a fair amount of delay before 5.3 is ready.)_

Started Oct 5, 2015  
First Draft completed Oct 5, 2015  
Final complete and posted Nov 26, 2015


	15. Bk5 - Ch3 A Saving People Thing

No Game For Old Men

Book 5.3 – "A Saving People Thing"

0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0  
0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0

Sunday, February 23rd, 2020  
Roppongi Hills district, Minato Ward, Shin Tokyo

Two Sekirei stood in the middle of a Shin Tokyo street, looking around at the chaos of wrecked vehicles and screaming people. They had both just landed in the midst of a multiple-vehicle accident scene, having jumped from the 23rd floor of the nearby Grand Tokyo Hyatt.

They wanted to help, but there was so much destruction, so many people injured.

Madoka, Sekirei 37, stood next to her childhood friend, Yosuga, Sekirei 44, and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. There were half a dozen cars scattered about the intersection all in varying states of damage. There was a large cargo truck that had run off the road and had pushed a small car through the glass windowed front of a retail store on one corner of the intersection. The driver of the truck slumped forward against the steering wheel of his vehicle. If she had to guess, she would say the driver of the truck had somehow lost control of his vehicle and had accelerated into and through the intersection while other traffic had the right of way.

The small car that was crushed into the storefront had blood all over the inside of the windshield.

It was all a mess and there were people screaming in pain and fear all around her. Madoka was frozen in indecision; she was supposed to help but how could she know who to help first? What about the ones who were hurt that she could not help? What if they died before she could get to them? Where should she start?

She turned in place, looking first here, and then there, trying to decide who she could help, who she couldn't. She was paralyzed; there were so many hurt people!

"Mado! What should we do?" Yosuga asked. The taller girl looked just as confused by the chaos as Madoka was. "Mado, snap out of it! What should we do first? Don't you have a plan?"

All Madoka could do was look up at Yosuga and shake her head. There wasn't a plan. How could you make a plan for something like this? That car across the street had the roof and windows cut completely off from the bottom half of the car. There were the bottom halfs of _people_ in the front seats of the half of a car! Maybe if she found the other half of the people she could fix them? Or should she help the lady who was screaming so loudly in that other car, the one that was on fire?

"I do not know, Yosu-chan! I do not know! What am I supposed to do?"

0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0

Yosuga looked into her friends' eyes and realized that Madoka wasn't going to be able to tell her what to do. Whether or not Gregory O'Donnell and Mado had ever come up with ideas for how to deal with a scene like this, it was obvious that Madoka wasn't thinking straight enough to follow any such plan. In fact, her blonde friend showed every sign of retreating into the timid passivity that defined her personality when they were children in the MBI Sekirei Labs.

" _Well,"_ thought Yosuga, _"at least I know how to deal with that. Just tell her what to do and help her do it."_

Yosuga looked around the accident scene again, this time instead of waiting for someone to tell her what the plan was she evaluated the situation as best she could and made decisions.

Reaching out mentally to her friend, Yosuga sent,{ _Mado-chan, you and I are going over to the truck and we are going to get the driver out of it first. Come on._ } Yosuga allowed no doubt to creep into her mental demeanor, pretending to herself and to Madoka that she knew what she was doing. Better to do the wrong thing right away than to wait forever trying to figure out what the right thing was.

She'd read that somewhere. A famous ship captain named Kirk had said it. It sounded like good advice so she'd made a point to remember it.

She took Madoka's hand and led her across the intersection to the cargo truck. Once there the two of them helped the only-vaguely-conscious driver out of the cab of his vehicle and down to the sidewalk where they then helped him lay down. Yosuga could not see any blood on his uniform so she guessed he was not badly injured.

{ _Mado-chan, do what you can for truck-driver-san and I will go check the car there for people we can help._ }

Yosuga told herself, _"Don't sound unsure. Sound like you know what you are doing. Make a decision. Any decision. Then act."_ Yosuga knew that was the key to acting in an emergency. Captain Kirk had been clear about that in the self-help book he'd written. At least she thought it had been a self-help book. She couldn't remember for sure now but it probably didn't matter.

She waited long enough to see Madoka nod her understanding and then place her delicate fingers on either side of the driver's head. Madoka then closed her eyes and Yosuga assumed she was doing her thing to help the driver.

Yosuga moved to the car that the truck had pushed into the storefront. The front windshield looked like it had been painted red on the inside so Yosuga was not optimistic about the driver. Maybe someone was in the back seat and had survived? She had to look, reluctant though she was.

0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0

Madoka came out of her Farsense/Healing Redact Probe she had been using to see the damage in the truck driver's head. She'd found some bruising of the brain and had repaired it but could not find any other injury. As she looked around the sidewalk to get her bearings Yosuga approached carrying a six-year-old boy who had blood all over his torso and head.

"Mado, here!" Yosuga approached where Madoka had been healing the truck driver. When she got close enough she Farspoke to Madoka, _{He's still alive, but he's hurt. He was in the backseat of the car and the woman in the front who was driving… there wasn't a lot left of her #barelysuppressedhorrorimage after the truck hit the car and a lot of the blood on him is from her.}_

Madoka realized Yosuga was babbling due to what she had seen in the car as she had worked to get the boy out of the wrecked vehicle. She helped her friend lay the boy down on the pavement then told Yosuga to go help others.

Madoka would try to help the boy.

After her dark-haired friend ran off Madoka knelt on the sidewalk next to the boy. He was breathing, she could see that much, but he was only staring up at the night sky and not responding to anything.

" _Alright,"_ she told herself, " _first, let us see how much of this blood is his and get his physical injuries fixed. Then maybe we will see about erasing his memory of the last hour."_

Placing her hands on the boy's chest, she shut her eyes and blended her Farsight with her Redaction metafunction. She was very glad that she had gotten her Norito from Gregory before coming down here; she could not use her Healing Probe if she wasn't in the Norito Boost State.

Then she was inside and looking for injuries.

 _{Farsense/Redact Probe}_

 _Madoka first examined the boy's skull, making as quick a pass around the bone structure as possible while still hopefully spotting any serious problems. She did not notice any depressions or fracturing so she then moved down to his chest, starting with the lungs. There, a puncture of one of his lungs, caused by a piece of metal that had penetrated his chest. She pushed the metal shard out through the hole it had created between two of his ribs and then she began trying to patch the hole in his lung._

 _It was not a very large hole, barely 1 cm across. She just needed to regrow normal exterior lung tissue across it. The… what was it called… pleura, that was it. There were two layers of pleura that made up the outside of the lung, though she could not remember the names for the separate layers. They were similar enough it did not matter. Just patch the hole, make sure the fluid that filled the space between the two layers is intact and not leaking, then move on._

 _How to make new pleura tissue? Memories of lessons with Gregory-kun on how to use the computer to edit photographs came to mind and she ran with the concept that seemed appropriate._

 _Find a good example of healthy, whole, tissue…_ _there_ _. Okay, that is exactly what was need over_ _here_ _where the hole was. So… Copy, paste, paste, clone, clone, clone, clone, healing brush, healing brush, smooth, smooth, trim._

 _Okay, good! That worked! It was slow, but it worked. Now the outer pleura…_

0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0

Ten minutes later Yosuga helped yet another injured person lay down on the sidewalk, away from the wrecked vehicles. Only two of the cars were on fire but from what Yosuga could tell they were terribly prone to exploding or at least burning in an accident.

That almost all of Yosuga's experience with vehicle accidents was from television and Hollywood movies explained her worry about how dangerous it was to be near the crashed cars. She stepped over to the front of the line of injured victims that lay on the sidewalk to where Madoka was still working on the young boy from the car that the truck had smashed. She took a moment to catch her breath; the last ten minutes of pulling people from their vehicles had been exhausting, even for a Sekirei. Trying to help people while hiding her Sekirei nature was tiring in its own, unique, way.

Yosuga was surprised that Madoka was still working on the first injured person, the six-year-old boy. She'd seen her blonde friend heal a cut finger almost instantly so she had assumed the other Sekirei could make quick work of patching up the people who had been injured. She sat on her heels next to where Madoka knelt next to the now-unconscious boy, noticing that the blood that was covering the boy was mostly dried. That meant he wasn't bleeding anew from any injuries at least, so that was surely good.

"Madoka! Yosuga! Mado-chan!" a man's voice from down the street reached Yosuga's ears. The recently arrived emergency services sirens made it difficult to hear much beyond a few feet away.

Yosuga looked up and around, trying to spot whoever was calling their names. Quickly enough she spotted Madoka's Ashikabi, Gregory, where he had parked his big orange vehicle on the sidewalk half a block away and he was standing on the tube railings that ran along each side of the vehicle, using the added height to look for her and Madoka.

Standing up and waving at Gregory, Yosuga realized they would need to get away from here soon. The Shin Tokyo Fire Department was arriving in numbers alongside the Police, who were putting barriers up across the street and sidewalks in order to segregate the accident scene from the increasingly large crowd of onlookers.

Thankfully the street Gregory had parked along had not been barricaded yet and he was able to run to where Yosuga stood, pushing through the crowd as politely as possible.

Gregory knelt next to his Sekirei and called out to her, "Mado-chan, are you okay? Mado-chan?"

Yosuga leaned over so that she could speak next to Gregory's ear, speaking urgently to the Ashikabi. "Gregory-san, she hasn't moved from that position or from this boy in ten minutes and she's not responding to me. The boy was the second victim we pulled from a vehicle, the first being the truck driver who seems fine. Maybe the boy was more badly injured than I thought, but she hasn't moved and I think we are out of time for this. We really need to go before the police and fire department people get us entirely blocked in."

The blond American nodded his understanding but didn't take his eyes off his Sekirei. Yosuga stood and watched around them, hoping no police would come over and interfere. After a moment Gregory reached up and grabbed Yosuga's wrist to get her attention. She looked down to where he was kneeling next to Madoka.

"Yosuga-san, do you think we should pick her up and carry…"

Gregory's question was interrupted by the sound of wet coughing coming from the boy that Madoka was working on. He looked at the young boy and saw that he was coughing blood out of his mouth and choking.

Madoka's eyes flew open and she grabbed the boy's shoulders, shaking him and crying out, "No! No, no, no! Breathe!"

Gregory took the boy and turned him so he was lying on his side so that the blood in his mouth could come out instead of pooling in his throat and choking him. A few more strong spasms that expelled not only blood but also small pieces of black tissue and then the boy stopped breathing entirely.

"No!" Madoka screamed frantically, drawing the attention of many people who were lying or sitting along the sidewalk. Bystanders began moving away from the frantic blonde girl, making room for the emergency crews to help if necessary. Gregory struck the boy on the back with the flat of his hand sharply, trying to dislodge whatever might be blocking his airway. She wailed, "Gregory-kun, he was okay, I fixed his injuries! He cannot die now!"

Gregory looked at his little blonde Sekirei helplessly. The boy was not breathing now. He wasn't choking or struggling in any way; he was just limp, lifeless. Gregory said, "Use your Norito chant, Mado-chan. We have to go very soon so saving your Norito Boost State for other people doesn't matter now."

Madoka nodded, glad her Ashikabi agreed with what she wanted to do. She closed her eyes, placed her hands on the boy's chest, and spoke her aria.

" _By the life of my pledge,  
may the harm to this one be cured_ _!"_

Unlike the previous times that Gregory had seen Madoka use her Norito Burst this time there was no sense of power being expelled or focused on her target. In truth there was nothing, just the sound of her words and the sirens and the screaming of hurt people. He looked over at Yosuga, who met his eyes with a questioning expression of her own. She too expected something to happen yet there was nothing.

On her knees next to the motionless body of the boy, her hands remaining on his chest, Madoka's shoulders hunched up as though she were trying to lift a great weight. Her eyes still closed she spoke again, hurriedly and desperately.

 _"Wrapped in cotton  
Bound with love  
Protected from pain  
Forever favored  
Life sent in flight!"_

With the first words Gregory could almost-but-not-quite see the energy leaving Madoka's body through her now-glowing-green hands where they were pressed to the boy's torso. Gregory felt a wrenching of _something_ in his own chest, a pull that preceded a steady flow from him to his Sekirei and then to the boy. Gregory quickly saw spots before his eyes and felt dizzy. He staggered and fell to his hands and knees, gasping.

Immediately after the last word of this new aria left Madoka's lips the child's rib cage expanded in a deep breath, then he exhaled. The boy began coughing, spitting a bit of blood out but quickly enough he began breathing easily and regularly.

The drain of energy from Gregory to Madoka and to the boy had thankfully ceased and Madoka sagged in exhaustion. Gregory's hands were shaky and his knees weak; he felt as though he had walked close to the edge of a dark precipice and only just avoided falling into an endless deep.

The boy had been _dead_ , Gregory realized. Madoka had pulled and kept pulling, dragging the boy back from wherever he had started to go, risking her own life - and Gregory's as well, he suspected. He hoped he could remember this later because it was obvious he and his beautiful little Sekirei needed to have words about reasonable limits when it came to trying to help strangers.

He also hoped that the disturbing memory of that dark and endless deep he had come close to would fade away, entirely.

Now, though, it was surely time for the three of them to get away from this area. Past time to do so, very likely, judging from the crowd of people watching them, some of who were clapping their hands and cheering for what looked like a boy being saved thanks to CPR and first aid. Gregory noticed several bystanders with cell phones taking pictures of Madoka and the boy and he prayed there was no video of green glowing hands and chanted five-line arias being taken.

"Yosuga-san, we need to go," Gregory spoke in a low, shaky voice to the tall Sekirei standing next to him and Madoka. "The boy looks to be fine now, he's breathing easily and seems merely asleep. But Mado-chan is exhausted and I'm not much better so there is not much else we can do here anyway. I'm going to help her to the Jeep. I need you to run interference if any authorities try to stop us, okay? Just distract them if you can. But keep them from stopping us, no matter what."

She nodded agreement, "I'll do that, Gregory-san. You're right, we need to go, now, or we will be caught behind a lot of barriers and it will be harder to get away from here without trouble."

Gregory helped Madoka to her feet, holding her up with one of her arms across his shoulders and his other arm around her waist. Yosuga moved ahead of them in the direction of the Jeep and Gregory followed as quickly as he could.

0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0  
0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0

Hours later Yosuga found herself the only person awake in the O'Donnell's apartment as both Madoka and Gregory had passed out in the master bedroom almost as soon as they made it home.

Yosuga was glad Gregory had taken the time to show her where the bathroom was and had told her to help herself to anything in the kitchen she wanted, including showing her where the tea was kept.

Lounging comfortably on the couch in a too-short pair of gray sweatpants and a loose, white tank top – both borrowed from Mado - Yosuga occupied herself by reading the various notes and handouts her friends had prepared for other Sekirei and Ashikabi they had met. She also spent some time with Madoka's tablet trying to make sense of the Sekirei social media pages Gregory had shown her.

Sipping hot tea and clicking through the amazing photos of Madoka - and many of 76 Midorino - was entertaining and educational. Yosuga wondered if Gregory O'Donnell could work such magic with a camera for her benefit. She was a little jealous of how beautiful and at ease both Mado-chan and number 76 looked in these photos.

It was obvious to Yosuga that Madoka had changed a great deal in the almost-six-months that had passed since she'd been removed from Group 11. With several months in isolation at the MBI Sekirei Labs and then almost three months of life out in Shin Tokyo - including two months as the bonded Sekirei of Gregory O'Donnell – it was inevitable that Madoka would not be the same insecure, timid girl that Yosuga had spent her whole life protecting and caring for. Sure, there were still moments where that girl showed through but there was also Madoka's Ashikabi to protect her and care for her now.

What role did Yosuga have now? Was there any room for her in Madoka's life? She'd spent her whole life defining herself in relation to Madoka. That wasn't likely to change now. She didn't want it to change; she _loved_ her friend more than anything in the world. Returning to Madoka's presence reinforced that love; Yosuga had forgotten just how _good_ it felt to be around her friend, supporting her, helping her, protecting her.

When Yosuga had been escorted from the MBI Sekirei Labs and put into the driverless automatic mini-bus that took her away from the building she'd spent most of her life in, she had only a vague plan. She figured that she would find Mado-chan and stay by her side to protect her from the dangers of the Sekirei Plan as long as she could. There was little doubt that Madoka would be an easy target for the other Sekirei and she would need someone to protect her, as always. Yosuga was less concerned about finding her own Ashikabi than she was concerned with finding Madoka.

If there were an Ashikabi for Yosuga then fate would arrange for them to meet, she figured. There was no way she could face endlessly jumping around the city hoping to feel some "reaction" from a stranger. Especially not now, knowing the rumors they'd heard in the Dorms about how some Ashikabi were forcing Sekirei into Wing Bonds and using them as mere tools to further their own ambitions were all true. _And_ abusing their Sekirei badly, from what Madoka said.

It would be better to just accept the likelihood that she would not find an Ashikabi. Then she could continue to do what she had done her whole life; protect and help her friend. Madoka had an Ashikabi. She had someone who loved her and cared for her. That was good enough for Yosuga. She would live vicariously through her beautiful blonde friend and if she could expend her own life fighting for Mado-chan then Yosuga would consider that a fair and good fate for herself. Yosuga was fortunate that Mado-chan's Ashikabi was a man like Gregory O'Donnell, who not only saw the Sekirei Plan for the evil it was but also _wanted_ to cooperate with other Sekirei!

And Gregory seemed a genuinely good man. One who had a surprisingly rational view of MBI and the Sekirei Plan. He recognized that the real enemy of the Sekirei weren't each other but the terrible brainwashing they'd all been subjected to. Yosuga was happy Madoka had found an Ashikabi like Gregory instead of the sort of man Mado had _thought_ she wanted when she was younger.

Yosuga wondered if the two of them had sex tonight. She'd listened, earlier, stretching her meager Farsense so as to hopefully hear some sound from the master bedroom but there'd been nothing. Likely they both had fallen asleep immediately; healing that boy at the accident site had drained both Sekirei and Ashikabi badly.

She might not feel arousal herself but she was just as curious about sex as anyone!

She hoped Madoka had a more healthy relationship with her Ashikabi than she'd had with 16 Toyotama. _That_ relationship had been far too mercenary for Yosuga to be happy about, but at least it was done with now.

Nodding to herself, glad she'd come to a determination of what she would do now, Yosuga washed out the tea cup and then turned off the kitchen lights before padding down the short hallway to the second bedroom where Gregory O'Donnell had told her she could sleep.

0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0  
0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0

Monday, February 24th, 2020  
Yoyogi District, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo  
The O'Donnell Apartment

{ _Yosu-chan, thank you for helping with transcribing those audio files. It would have taken me all day even with the new voice-to-text software Gregory installed for me._ } The Farspoken gratitude came from Madoka who was in the kitchen preparing tea for herself and Yosuga to enjoy. Now that their To-Do list was more-or-less caught up on they could relax and chat for a bit.

Yosuga still wanted to get to the bicycle shop to get a bike like Madoka had. And they both needed to make a run to the nearby Post Office for the daily 500,000¥ withdrawal but both of those items would take less than an hour. It was time now to relax and enjoy the unseasonably warm sunny day with good tea and her dear friend.

From the living room of the apartment Yosuga answered, { _It was no problem, Madoka-sister. It was actually a good opportunity for me to get familiar with the data tracking that you and Gregory-san are doing. And it has been a while since I have typed much so it's probably a good thing I get some practice at it._ }

Placing the last items on the tea tray, Madoka laughed softly and answered, { _Yes, only you would need practice when you can 'only' type 100 words per minute_.}

Yosuga smiled where she was sitting on the carpeted floor of the O'Donnell's living room, still wearing the too-short gray sweatpants and the far-too-loose white tank top she'd slept in. The large sliding door was open and the curtains pulled aside to let the sunshine and the mild breeze fill the apartment with fresh air. Even in crowded Shibuya Ward the air was crisp and clean; the air pollution problems Shin Tokyo suffered in years past having been finally resolved through persistent technological determination. And with the temperature at 19°C (67°F) both girls were enjoying the pleasant weather and the sunshine that filled the living room through the open sliding patio door.

{ _Well, Mado-chan, I'm just very glad you and Gregory-san can read hiragana and the computers here have proper Japanese keyboards. If I'd had to transcribe on an English keyboard you'd be typing faster than me by far._ }

Madoka walked from the kitchen carrying the tea tray, graceful and sure-footed as she crossed the living area and then knelt to place the tray on the low table next to where Yosuga sat. One teacup tipped off the edge of the tray and fell towards the coffee table and Madoka could only watch, blue eyes widening at the imminent crash of expensive pottery.

Before the cup could hit the wood of the coffee table Yosuga's body blurred in motion as she zipped around the table and her arm shot out to catch the endangered teacup.

"I love it when you do that, Yosu-chan," Madoka smiled, impressed as always with her friend's amazing speed and reflexes.

"And I think you deliberately drop teacups just to make me have to catch them, Mado-chan."

The dark haired Sekirei set the teacup down the leaned back against the couch, admiring her beautiful friend, who appeared comfortable and graceful even in the provocatively short gray cotton shorts and beige chemise she had been wearing all morning. That Madoka didn't bother with a bra under the thin cotton chemise had startled Yosuga at first, given how her beautiful blonde friend had always been particular about keeping covered and preserving her body modesty. Another change in her friend wrought by living with Gregory O'Donnell, no doubt.

Madoka noticed the admiring gaze from her friend and gave her a small smile in return.

Madoka reached for her phone and used the control app on it to adjust the music playing on the household entertainment system. She realized for the first time that the system they had at their loft in Ebisu was substantially better than the one in the O'Donnell apartment. Her smile widened a bit at the realization that her Ashikabi was taking advantage of the MBI Platinum cards to buy toys for their home in Ebisu that he'd not been able to justify for his family's apartment on his teacher's salary.

With the music turned low and playing a long playlist from one of Gregory's House/Trance directories, Madoka reached for the teapot and poured for Yosuga and herself. As she fussed with the tea service and snacks she Farspoke her friend, { _We need to teach you English, Yosuga-sister. Though teaching Gregory-kun German would also be a good idea. It would almost be a secret code language for us in public given how few people understand it here._ }

{ _I like that idea better than me learning English. I do not have your easy facility with languages, Mado-chan. It would take years for me to gain useful fluency I think.}_ Yosuga reached for her tea and took a moment to admire the delicate cup that she'd rescued from the perils of gravity and hard surfaces. The golden-brown coloration was rich and the cup felt silky smooth to her fingertips.

Madoka answered the query she could feel in Yosuga's mind, { _Yi xing clay cups, same with the teapot. Gregory and I picked these out the first week after his wife and daughter left for the States; I thought shopping for ridiculously expensive tea service might help distract his depressed thoughts at the time and I was right, at least for that evening. We have another set at the… other place._ } Madoka frowned as she sipped the expensive Anji white tea. She disliked having to keep secrets from Yosuga and with Farspeach it was difficult to dissemble without being obvious.

After taking an appreciative sip of her own tea Yosuga set the cup down on the table and said, outloud, "It's okay, Mado-chan. You and Gregory-san have things you can't tell me and I understand that completely. I might not have at first, but after going over all the risks and security arrangements you two have been living under I get it now, I do. So don't let it worry you that I'll take offense, okay? Let's speak out loud for now; I don't want to make it more difficult for you to keep your Ashikabi's secrets."

Madoka smiled in response and nodded agreement. While she missed being able to use the mindspeech of the Sekirei she also felt the strain of trying to avoid certain subjects while using it with someone she trusted like Yosuga.

Yosuga continued, "I noticed last night that this apartment is oddly empty and feels unlived in, Mado-chan. If I had to guess I would say that you packed up all of the things that belonged to Gregory's wife and daughter for him while he was at his school during the days and you shipped those boxes to the States? How long did it take for him to agree to that?"

Setting her own tea cup down Madoka sighed, "Too long. It was a month after they left before he would agree to letting me take down the Christmas decorations and pack up the personal belongings. But it needed to be done; just being here at all depressed him and while we do not spend much time here anymore it was not healthy for him to be surrounded by reminders of what he lost when he became my Ashikabi."

"I doubt he would describe it like that, Mado-chan," Yosuga protested.

"You are correct, Yosu-chan, but nevertheless. The Sekirei Plan has cost Gregory-kun more than anyone should be asked to pay."

Yosuga picked up her tea and savored the mild warmth of the cup in her hands. "So," she said, "tell me how you came to have Gregory as your Ashikabi. I've still not heard this story and it's rather driving me crazy you know."

Madoka smiled at her friend though a bit of melancholy remained in her expression. She told her about being spotted near Tokyo Metro High by 86 Katsuragi, hiding in Gregory's classroom and telling him all about the Sekirei Plan, the chase in the Jeep along the Omotesandō. Then finally being cornered in a parking lot and her deciding Gregory O'Donnell was a far better choice than what fate had in store for her if Katsuragi caught her.

Yosuga was captivated by the story though she realized that it would be far more difficult to hear if she didn't already know that Gregory and Madoka had actually worked out well for each other, as far as she could see at least.

Wrapping her story up, Madoka added, "Yosu-chan, it was nothing like we thought it would be, when we were girls living in the Sekirei Labs." Her full, pink lips delicately sipped at her tea and her large, blue eyes focused on an unseen distance. "You remember I knew exactly what I wanted in an Ashikabi. A strong, muscular, handsome guy, maybe 25 years old. Old enough to know his way around, but, you know, not _old_ old. With thick black hair to run my fingers through. Someone confident, handsome, and sexy. Maybe he would have a tattoo, or might have a motorcycle. He would have something just a little bit dangerous about him."

Yosuga grinned across the low table at her friend. "I remember, Mado-chan. You had a whole list of things you wanted in your Ashikabi. He had to be rich and handsome, but not just some salaryman; he had to have leisure time to take care of you after all."

Madoka nodded, sipping her expensive tea. "Yes." She paused, the golden-brown Yi Xing teacup held in both hands for warmth. "It did not turn out like that. I spent days in the cold and snow and was scared out of my wits after I saw what happened to 86 Katsuragi, how Toyotama beat her so bad, till she was bleeding, then she held Katsuragi there while her Ashikabi… he just spit in Katsuragi's mouth, Yosu-chan." Madoka cringed at the memory, closing her eyes and going quiet.

After taking a moment to regain her composure, Madoka continued, "MBI did not anticipate what would happen with the Sekirei Plan very well at all, Yosu-chan. And they certainly did not prepare us for the challenges we would face out here. While I admit I was not as attentive to some of the lectures as I might should have been there are still a vast amount of things about daily life in Shin Tokyo we were never taught. And details about the Sekirei Plan we were never told! I knew there was a Disciplinary Squad but I had no idea who was in it, for example. Not until you told Gregory-kun and me that it was 04 Karasuba and was expanded in January to include 104 Haihane and 105 Benitsubasa. Tell me, Yosu-chan, what good does it do to have a police unit to enforce the rules of the Sekirei Plan and then not make sure every Sekirei in the Plan knows exactly who the police are and what their authority is?"

Shrugging, Yosuga agreed with Madoka's point. "Not much good at all, Mado-chan. Imagine a scenario where a Sekirei encounters 04 Karasuba and doesn't recognize her as either a single digit or as a Disciplinary Squad member. The Sekirei would likely challenge the Black Sekirei and quickly be killed, likely.(1) For what purpose? Why? I've asked those questions for a long time but I kept them to myself because all of the rest of you seemed to be lapping up the 'fight fight fight' nonsense MBI was feeding us."

"I wish you could have trusted me with your doubts, Yosu-chan. Though I understand why you did not." Madoka poured more tea for herself and for Yosuga before continuing, "It took Gregory-kun a great deal of effort to convince me that the Sekirei Plan, MBI, and the Professor were all dangers to the Sekirei. Picture that, Yosu-chan. That it took my _Ashikabi_ a great deal of effort to convince me against something MBI had claimed. That is substantial conditioning!"

Madoka picked up her now-full cup and continued, "I suspect that whatever went wrong with your Adjustments that caused you to have such terrible headaches and tremors for so long also interfered with the methods MBI was using to 'convince' us of the necessity and goodness of the Sekirei Plan."

Yosuga nodded agreement. "I've long thought so too, though you can imagine I kept such things to myself. By the end I felt I was a bare step away from being declared a Scrapped Number so I stopped complaining of any issues at all, letting the Adjusters have the impression that they'd finally corrected what they screwed up. If there is a silver lining to that cloud it would be that I never bought into the Sekirei Plan at all."

"You should know, Yosu-chan," Madoka began tentatively, "I have learned a great deal about my Sekirei powers - what we've labeled metapsychic functions - which I never suspected before I was released from MBI. I can do much more than heal small injuries and… I want to talk to Gregory about this before we try it but I would like to see if I can use my Redact/Farsense medical probe on you to see if I can find out what caused the problems you had with your Adjustments. Not try to fix them, I am not nearly saying that I could do that, but at least, perhaps, to see what is causing the problems. I know you still suffer symptoms that signify that all is not well, even still."

Yosuga shrugged indifferently, "I wouldn't have a problem with you looking or even trying to fix it if you wanted to. I trust you to only do what you know is best, Mado-chan."

Madoka smiled at her friend, warmth spreading through her chest at the trust Yosuga so casually bestowed on her.

"You should have heard the things that made it back to us in the Dorms after Phase One started, Mado-chan. I'm sure we heard only a smallest bit and many horror stories never made it back to us but the things we heard were bad enough."

Frowning, Madoka asked, "Like what?"

"Well," Yosuga began, "you know they've been releasing us all over the city for months, spread out over the whole metropolitan area. There's more than 13,000 square kilometers in this city. And there's, like, over 19 million humans and only 107 of us, less when you take out the Scrapped Numbers and the Disciplinary Squad and such. Five or six of us a week taken in vans to different places and let go so that we are forced to wander the city alone. The odds of us finding any of our crèche mates are damn near zero, on purpose. They _wanted_ us out here wandering around lost and vulnerable, Mado-chan. And not just vulnerable to ruthless bastards like those guys that tried to mug you when you first got out. We heard stories about Sekirei who have gotten winged by Ashikabi that are really abusive, who beat them, have sex with them no matter what she wants. Even pimp their Sekirei out to their friends."

Madoka shivered, recalling the memories she had seen in 16 Toyotama's mindscape. Memories of how she and the other Sekirei were treated by their Ashikabi. "At least Gregory-san cares about me. Even if he is not what I dreamed of in an Ashikabi, he has a good heart and he loves me."

Yosuga grinned, "You think so? Even I could see how much he cares for you, Mado-chan. Oh, one guy we heard about was using his Sekirei to kill off people who had angered him, like his ex-girlfriends. I heard that 04 Karasuba took care of that guy herself. Of course she also cut down his Sekirei and put her on a level 4 termination. Because, you know, _Karasuba_."

A throw pillow hit Yosuga a glancing blow, hurled by Madoka at her friend. "Aiee, don't say her name! You know it is bad luck!"

"Fufufu, yes, just like when we were all kids! And what was it that would make 05 Mutsu appear?" Yosuga asked, trying to recall.

"Stepping on a crack." Madoka shivered in remembered fear.

Yosuga chirped, "Right! I was so afraid of all of the First Five. 02 Matsu was always talking to the researchers, in the middle of everything, watching them experiment on us. She was there when they separated 07 and her twin 22, did you know that? When 07 went crazy and killed those lab techs?" Yosuga's face settled into a sad reminiscence.

Madoka picked her teacup back up and answered, "Yes, I remember that. I was there when 07 went crazy."

"Ah, that's right, I'd forgotten that." Yosuga busied herself pouring another cup of tea, and then nodded, "Was an accident, they said. But hardly anyone really knew what happened, just the ones who saw 07 lose it when they took her twin away. Everyone else they kept apart and in different groups. It was all so confusing. Remember how we were afraid 02 Matsu would have 04 Karasuba come take us in the night to experiment on us and we'd disappear and no one would know where we went?" Yosuga took her friends teacup and poured for her as well.

Taking the golden brown cup from Yosuga once it was filled with the aromatic AnJi white tea, Madoka said, "Yes. And then I _was_ taken away but not by 04 Karasuba. It was just the MBI researchers. They changed my room one night and I had new labs I had to go to for adjustment and all new technicians were there. I never saw any of you again, not until we were out here. I missed you so much Yosu-chan. And Toyotama and Ichiya. The four of us were the only ones in the group who resonated, the others, like 24 Asuka and 57 Yahan, they were okay but we could not _count_ on them. They would tell the Researchers whatever they wanted to know just to get favors. Or like 15 Himeko, who was always really hostile. I do not know why she hated me."

Yosuga held one hand up and waggled it back and forth. "It wasn't so much you as 16 Toyotama. 15 Himeko never got along with Toyotama and since Toyo was your "onee-sama…". I heard that 15 Himeko ended up with an Ashikabi in the south who's collecting a group like that Higa Izumi guy is. I feel sorry for her if that's true. Oh, and then the next time you saw Toyotama she was grinding 86 Katsuragi's face into the street so her Ashikabi could spit in Ragi-chan's mouth."

"It was horrible, Yosu-chan. And then Katsuragi later tried to do the same thing to me! All because her Ashikabi ordered it. Yosu-chan, when they told us in the labs that being with our Ashikabi would make us happy and that our Ashikabi would be the kind of person we best needed, I think they did not know what that meant. _I_ think that _we_ change to suit our Ashikabi over time. And the stronger willed and more certain the Ashikabi is of what he wants the more it changes us, until we are happy with what our Ashikabi says and what he wants. At first 86 Katsuragi was terrified of what happened. And I know Toyotama was not happy about how she was treated. But later on they both became more like that scumbag of an Ashikabi they have. That is what 16 told me when she ambushed me. That next time she would not be the kind of person who lets someone get away. I think she meant that literally Yosu-chan."

Yosuga finished her tea and cleared away the pot and cups, then called out to her friend from the small kitchen, "But that's horrible Mado-chan. Why would MBI turn us loose only to be captured by horrible people like that man in the East? And why did 01 just leave us to this fate? Why did 02 Matsu help them, and 03 Kazehana too. She was always trying to get in the favor of the Director. And 04 and 05, why would they all leave us to this, if MBI is turning us loose in such a way that we are vulnerable and scared so that we fall to these horrible Ashikabi and then after they catch us we are changed so that we like these horrible things?"

Madoka leaned back against the couch, her small chemise riding up, exposing her flat stomach as she stretched then sighed comfortably. "I wish I knew Yosu-chan. There were always rumors about 01 and if she ran away or was killed by MBI or kept captive. I always believed they had her captured and she was trying to find a way to get free so she could rescue us. But even if that is true, it does not help now. If she came to rescue us now after all these years, it would be too late for so many."

Yosuga returned from the kitchen and flopped down next to her blonde friend, lying so that she could use Madoka's tummy as a pillow.

Madoka said, "I still believe 01 will come save us, including those who are terminated, their tama are still secure and she will get free from MBI and come," Madoka's voice was as sure about this now as it was when they were younger and still in the MBI labs.

"I don't know if I believe it so much anymore Mado-chan." Yosuga stared up at the ceiling. "But it doesn't matter much now. You have a good Ashikabi, even if he isn't what you thought you wanted. He saved you from 86 Katsuragi that night and from that man in the East."

Madoka nodded, "Yes. But the next time someone challenges me and I cannot run away or get lucky like I did with 16 when she ambushed me it will not matter that Gregory-san became my Ashikabi. I will be terminated anyway and then Gregory-kun will be all alone. I have learned how to do damage with my Redaction but it is not really good enough in a fight, it is really slow, and I am still not a power type no matter how much I practice. It is so unfair; this is not how it was supposed to be." Tears gathered at the edges of Madoka's bright blue eyes and she sniffled cutely.

Yosuga moved up so that she was lying next to Madoka, pulling her friend close with an arm around her shoulder comfortingly. "I know Mado-chan. And I think for many of us it's just Fight Fight Fight until one is left without ever really questioning why we are supposed to kill every single other Sekirei on this world just to 'ascend to the higher sky above', whatever that means." Yosuga just held her friend for a few moments, waiting for the sniffles to stop.

Madoka eventually added, "I don't know why they are doing all of this. But if 01 is going to save us it's got to be soon because time is running out, you know?"

0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0  
0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0

Authors Notes:

Footnote (1): This actually happens in canon. Anime Season 1 Episode 6/Manga #19, calendar date 4/8/2020. 04 Karasuba spots 38 Mitsuha and Scrapped Akitsu walking around the city and goes after them for nothing more than the lulz.

Akitsu, as a former single digit, recognizes Karasuba but 38 Mitsuha _does not._ That's important, as important as a throwaway scene can be. Number 38 also doesn't recognize the moniker "The Black Sekirei" either.

What this scene tells us (in loud, all capital, letters) about MBI's briefing (or lack of same) of the Sekirei concerning the Disciplinary Squad and who is in the Disciplinary Squad is never explored in canon (or most fanfic) but it's clear as can be that at least some of the Sekirei (and likely _most_ of the normal non-single digit sorts of Sekirei) have _no idea who is on the D Squad_ nor do they know the First Five by their names or appearances.

There's no doubt at all that 38 Mitsuha had no idea who it was that she was facing in that alley and that 04 Karasuba cut her down _for the fun of it_.  
So, yes, NGFOM does actually look at what this scene meant and what it says about the wider Sekirei population's awareness (or rather, lack of awareness) of the D-Squad and its members.

Second note: Yes, in this chapter Madoka came up with her own version of Gregory's _Sekirei Plasticity Theory_. Whether through independent observation of facts or incidental mental leakage no one will likely ever know. But Gregory still has not actually spoken to Madoka of his theory or of why she now loves _The Oakridge Boys_ so much.

Lastly, there is probably only one more chapter to go in the Book 5 story arc. Okay, maybe two. But probably one. I think.

0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0  
0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0

From the notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 _ **Sekirei**_

 _ **The Disciplinary Squad**_

Little is known for sure about the so-called Disciplinary Squad. 37 Madoka says she was never officially briefed on the existence of the Squad nor on its members, having only heard rumor that the Squad existed.

44 Yosuga, being released into Shin Tokyo almost three months after 37 Madoka, heard much more about the Disciplinary Squad and its members while she waited her turn to be released into the city for Phase One of the Sekirei Plan.

Information from 44 Yosuga:

1\. The Disciplinary Squad was originally only 04 Karasuba but was expanded in January of 2020 to include the as-yet-unreleased 104 Haihane and 105 Benitsubasa. Both 104 and 105 were removed from Group 11 and given special "Adjustments" before being put into the Disciplinary Squad.

It is entirely likely that the expansion of the squad from one single digit to three members was in response to the events of December 2019 in which Higa Izumi winged multiple Sekirei - including powerful fighters such as 16 Toyotama - giving rise to a situation for which MBI seems to have not planned.

04 Karasuba may be powerful enough to be a sure bet against any single Sekirei in the Sekirei Plan (i.e. every Sekirei above 05 that isn't a Scrapped Number or already terminated) but MBI must have been less than sure of her ability against multiple Sekirei, especially as Higa Izumi spent December and January acquiring multiple low-numbered Sekirei (such as he did when he acquired both 16 Toyotama and 18 Ichiya).

Could 04 defeat 16 Toyotama and 18 Ichiya at once? Could she do so 10 times out of 10 tries? If not then it makes sense that MBI Security would want to add more muscle to their Disciplinary Squad.

Adding 104 and 105, especially if their limiting "Adjustments" were removed, would go a long way towards bringing enforcement strength back to the Disciplinary Squad. Whether they could stand against all of Higa's Sekirei at once is certainly unknowable, but at least three strong Sekirei would be adequate for almost all enforcement duties, especially if those duties were simple execution of suspected rule-breakers.

We have to assume that the members of the Disciplinary Squad are Wing Bonded Sekirei, given the power boost Wing Bonding provides. But whether they have separate Ashikabi or share an Ashikabi is unknown at this time.

2\. The Squad has as its mission the enforcement of the rules of the Sekirei Plan. This would make the Disciplinary Squad an important element of what we've been calling "MBI Security".

It does not seem that the Disciplinary Squad is involved in the efforts of the other arm of MBI's Sekirei Plan Operations, "MBI Intelligence".

What rules the Squad exists to enforce are unknown and no formal set of rules has ever been found by any Ashikabi or Sekirei we've spoken to so far. The only rules any of us have heard are that:

a) we're not to leave the city and,  
b) we're to keep the Sekirei Plan secret at least until the Second Phase begins.

What form of "enforcement" the Disciplinary Squad exercises is unknown. 44 Yosuga says she expects any rule breaker to simply be killed by whichever Disciplinary Squad member is sent out to deal with them. It absolutely boggles the mind that the only enforcement efforts by MBI would start and end with execution, but that seems to be the case.

That they make no effort to publicize this dire consequence for rule breaking, make no effort to insure every Ashikabi and Sekirei know the Disciplinary Squad members and what their authority is, is just one more baffling bit of seeming insanity from Hiroto Minaka's operation at MBI. There can be no doubt that the Disciplinary Squad is MBI's primary tool for enforcement of the Sekirei Plan's rules and as such are the most distinct threat any Sekirei and Ashikabi will face if they intend to work against the Sekirei Plan's restrictions.

As not even _rumor_ has surfaced of epic confrontations between Higa's Sekirei and the Disciplinary Squad we can speculate that MBI Security has not yet been issued orders to reign in Higa's group. Why they've not been issued such orders is a mystery as almost _all_ of the open Sekirei combat that has occurred in Phase One has been caused by Higa's Sekirei, in seeming direct contradiction to the rules about remaining completely secret until the Second Phase.

Is MBI's Sekirei Plan Operations Management unwilling to risk MBI Security's Disciplinary Squad in a confrontation they are unsure they can win? Are they going to continue allowing larger, more powerful, groups of Sekirei to flaunt the rules while ruthlessly slaughtering single Sekirei for minor infractions?

Judging from the complete lack of professionalism seen so far, that is exactly my guess.

0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0  
0.o|NGFOM5.3|o.0

Started Oct 5, 2015  
First Draft completed Dec 17, 2015  
Final Dec 18, 2015  
Posted Dec 18, 2015


	16. Bk5 - Ch4 Life in Shin Tokyo

No Game For Old Men

Book 5.4 – "Life in Shin Tokyo"

 _Author's Note: Oh my friggin' god it took forever to get this chapter written. And there's no good reason for it. It's not like it's a complex chapter. It's mostly filler and setup. I wanted to get this chapter completed and posted this month (May 2016) since this is the one year anniversary of NGFOM's first chapter going live here on ff dot net. So, happy birthday to No Game For Old Men!  
Thanks to Snakespur (who has his own Sekirei story he's writing, The Large Ashikabi. Check it out for an excellent OC Ashikabi story) and JLantrip for proofreading this chapter. Any spelling and grammar errors still in place are there in spite of their heroic efforts.  
As always if the reader spots any errors do please let me know so that I can correct them, thanks!  
Thanks also to ShaperV (author of some amazingly good Naruto stories including Time Braid and Indomitable) for his encouraging words about NGFOM. It's always a real pleasure to hear from fanfiction authors you respect when they have positive things to say about your own efforts! Thanks, ShaperV!  
One last thing, if everyone who is following this story would PM Fenschway and ask him to repost The Game Changer, that would be awesome. The most significant Sekirei story on the site and it's been taken down! Let him know you want to see it back on the site!  
So, here's to hoping Chapter 17/Book 5.5 won't take 6 months to write!_

v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v  
v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v

Monday, February 24th, 2020  
Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo  
Tokyo Metro High School

"Are you certain, Gregory? Is there nothing I can say or do to change your mind on this? I'm willing to fight for an increase to your salary of 15% and add an equal amount to your housing allowance. I'm pretty sure I can get it if you'll agree to a new five-year contract. You aren't underpaid now but I could very likely get Principle and the Board to okay a substantial increase if it will change your mind."

Azama Yo, English Department Head at Tokyo Metro High, tried to bargain with his department's best teacher. The two were in Azama's office in a private meeting after school hours discussing a subject Gregory had been putting off for weeks.

They were sitting in comfortable chairs facing each other. Far more relaxed than the traditional "boss at his desk, supplicant in a small chair in front of the desk" ploy most administrators still used.

Azama Yo had spent years in the U.S. acquiring his own higher education. Thus, he'd been "corrupted" by liberal American ways. His sheer competence – and his successful family name – gave him more latitude in how he ran his department than most Department Heads enjoyed.

Azama considered the acquisition of Gregory O'Donnell to his staff to have been a big win for himself and for the school's English department. He was not particularly happy at what he was hearing now.

Gregory furrowed his brow in a bit of a surprised scowl. It was almost unheard of for a supervisor to offer such a large increase in salary without a monumental struggle. This offer said more than mere words just how successful Gregory had been in working at his career. And now he had little choice but to essentially kiss it all goodbye.

Shaking his head Gregory responded, "That is incredibly generous Yo and more flattering than I can express, but it's not really a matter of money, shocking as that might seem. I'm afraid it _is_ absolutely necessary I skip this next academic year."

They spoke English and - at Azama's insistence – the Department Head was on a first name basis with the teachers who worked for him, especially Gregory O'Donnell.

"I am certain, Gregory said, "that you have noticed that my focus simply hasn't been what it should be for the last two months."

Azama reluctantly nodded agreement. He had indeed noticed.

Gregory continued, "So at the end of this academic year I must take a leave of absence. Call it a sabbatical or whatever will work best for you with the school Administration Yo, but if you could arrange it so that I could at least have a chance of returning for the next school year, in April 2021, I would be very much in your debt."

There, the final nail in the coffin. No backing out now.

"Damnit, Gregory. You already work fewer hours than anyone else in the department does, including myself. And I'm offering you more money! You know I have to put up with Principle constantly questioning your only-5-days-a-week schedule already. What more can I do?"

Gregory shook his head and sighed. "I know and believe me I appreciate the difficulties my… casual approach to work hours causes you. We've spoken about this before and we both know that I get my job done, and done pretty well, in the hours I work. And, before you comment, we both know that's not what Principle is complaining about. It's appearances, not actual job performance. Real professionals in Japan work 80 hours a week, right? If you don't work 80 hours a week you're a slacker. Regardless if you actually get your work done. We both know the deal there. No, it's not about my paycheck and it's absolutely not because I don't appreciate all that you've done for me as my supervisor, Yo. If I had any other options I'd take them but… I simply must take this next academic year off."

The younger man sighed and nodded in response. He had played the cards he had so now he surrendered with what dignity he could manage. "Very well, Gregory. I'll start the paperwork for a leave of absence for the 2020 school year. I can't guarantee your position will still be available when you're ready to return, you know that, but you must know how this department values you and you can be assured I will do what I can to make sure you have a job to return to. At the very least you can count on a glowing recommendation from myself and even from Principle and the Board."

Gregory smiled and gave Azama a half-bow from his chair, "That is more than I could expect and I truly appreciate your efforts on my behalf, Yo. You've been an outstanding Department Head and it's been a real pleasure working for you, I want you to know that."

Azama waved off the compliment and nodded in acknowledgment. "Yes, well, this is still a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, Gregory. But if I can't talk you out of it then it is what it is. Now, you've given me the official request and I've accepted that you need a year to settle your personal business. That is all I need to know officially and all I will pass up the ladder, but Gregory… tell me, friend to friend, what is going on? I hear rumors that your wife has returned to America with your daughter and I expected you to return with them but that's not your plan, is it. So what is going on?"

Gregory couldn't suppress a cringe at the confirmation that his marital difficulties were gossip material among the teaching and administration staff. That would be a significant problem unless he was very lucky. Azama Yo might be a liberal open-minded fellow, but _his_ boss, the school Principle, was very much not. And keeping a 40-year-old effectively-single male as a teacher in Senior English was unlikely unless Azama really fought for Gregory.

"Just as I said, Yo. Personal issues, needing my full attention. Officially that is all I can say. It's somewhat embarrassing that these things are interfering with my career here but I really feel its best if I can concentrate entirely on resolving them and setting things in order. And I can't do that if I have the obligations of my daily classes."

Azama loosened his black necktie and stood, walking to a file cabinet behind his desk. He opened the drawer and pulled out a bottle of scotch whiskey and two crystal tumblers. Returning to his chair he handed Gregory one glass and he poured a generous dollop of whiskey for both of them.

"Good thing you waited until after everyone else was gone, Gregory. Otherwise we'd be stuck with just tea," Azama smiled.

Gregory's eyebrows tried to climb up to his receding hairline at the blatant rules violations Azama was engaging in, but he took his glass of scotch and sipped it appreciatively nonetheless. "Thank you, Yo, this is most kind."

"You're welcome, Gregory. Now, what's her name? Your mistress who your wife found out about. And do you have a picture you could share with your old friend Yo?"

Gregory coughed and sputtered, the whiskey burning his nostrils like napalm. Azama waited patiently, pretending to not notice Gregory's distress.

Gregory finally choked out, "What?"

"You heard me, Greg. I've got your official story and request and that's all anyone outside this office will ever hear. But we've known each other for years so just between you and me, what's her name?"

Gregory could only stare for a moment, eyes still watering from the pain, and then he croaked out, "Madoka. Her name is Madoka."

"A lovely name. So she's Japanese? And I know that as much as you like lugging around that camera of yours you've got to have at least one picture you could share with your old friend. Come on! Give!"

Gregory hesitated only a moment. The knowledge that he really did need Azama Yo's advocacy with the school Administration convinced him to cooperate with his boss's curiosity. He'd hoped to avoid this entirely but he'd mentally prepared himself in case it came up.

Gregory brought out his phone and tapped up a series of photos then handed over the device. It was showing the picture of Madoka wearing her New Year's Eve silk yukata, smiling and waving at the camera. Azama's eyebrows made their own climb up his forehead. As he flipped through the selection of photos Gregory had queued on his phone he could only shake his head in amazement and admiration.

As well as a generous portion of envy.

Azama finished his glass of whiskey in one drink, still admiring the slideshow of photos. "Not Japanese then, but with a Japanese name? And… incredible. Beautiful. But…" Here Azama paused to sigh and shake his head, "So young, Gregory. How old is she?"

Gregory sighed and looked aside. Yeah, this was going to be as bad as he'd feared. He knew that Madoka's apparent age would become a serious issue for him career wise if she became known. Having a mistress was one thing; old-school fellows like Principle would even rather respect it. But having a mistress young enough to possibly pass as a High School student?

That made you a risk. The sort of risk to which responsible school Administrators did not expose their students.

"She's not a minor, Yo. But yes, she's young. Twenty-one, in point of fact."

Azama Yo poured himself and Gregory another two fingers worth of whiskey and leaned back in his chair. "She could _maybe_ pass for twenty-one, I suppose. Damn, Gregory, I don't need to tell you…" The younger man trailed off, lips pursed and brow furrowed in concern while also still looking admiringly at the continuing slideshow on the phone in his hand.

"No, you're right, you don't need to tell me," Gregory answered. "I understand exactly what the problems would be if this became common knowledge. We've been discrete, but… there's no way to guarantee someone with a grudge wouldn't find out and make an issue of this, to my own and possibly the school's embarrassment. My wife, Karen, for example, is certainly someone with a grudge now and she has access to several Board members wives as well as being socially familiar with Principle's wife due to their mutual charity work."

Gregory saw no reason to equivocate or waffle with the facts at this point. The truth was the truth and his best hope for his career was to have his Department Head's help and cooperation.

That assistance could only be purchased with brutal honesty. Gregory knew Azama Yo well enough to be sure of that.

Azama nodded, agreeing with Gregory's description of the situation. He said, "If it doesn't become a public scandal then there is no issue. If it does…"

"I understand entirely, Yo. If this becomes a public scandal I expect you to distance yourself from me, as is only appropriate. Again, she's certainly a legal adult and there's nothing illegal here, but… I do understand the issues."

"It would ruin your career, Gregory. From now on it would follow you anywhere you went."

Gregory nodded then held out both hands, palms up, and shrugged, "Yes, I know. But… what can I do, Yo?"

Azama took one last look at the photo on the screen then handed Gregory's phone back to him. The Department Head smiled and nodded, "You're right, Gregory, you're right. What can you do? Beautiful women have power that men such as you and I are not meant to resist! And your Madoka is a truly beautiful woman. You certainly will not be the first man to be undone by following the whims of his smaller head like a damn fool."

Gregory smiled in sardonic agreement and the two men tapped their glasses lightly together and then finished off the whiskey.

As Gregory stood to leave, Azama Yo said to him, "I wish you a wonderful year's sabbatical, starting with the end of this academic year, Gregory. You lucky son of a bitch."

Gregory laughed as he left the office, feeling lighter-hearted than he'd expected. He _was_ a lucky son-of-a-bitch, from a certain point of view.

As long as that point of view did not contain his lost daughter or his wrecked marriage. Or his now-badly-imperiled professional life and reputation.

It was rapidly getting to the point where Gregory O'Donnell was going to have to stop worrying about his reputation and his career as a schoolteacher. That boat, so to say, had quite likely already sailed.

v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v  
v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v

"Triage," Gregory said as he sat down on the O'Donnell apartment's couch next to Madoka, setting his Diet Coke on the coffee table and then a stack of printout next to the bottle.

It was late Monday evening and the three had already finished dinner. Madoka and Yosuga were dressed for sleeping comfort in short shorts and braless tank tops. It was Gregory's favorite time to sit and talk with his Sekirei about events of the day and having Yosuga there for tall, dark, and slender contrast to Mado's short, blonde, and curvy self was likely going to make it even more a favorite time of day.

Madoka's borrowed short shorts were noticeably loose on Yosuga's slender hips, revealing constant glimpses of white panties with every movement the tall Sekirei made. Gregory found he had to make a real effort to avoid ogling the girl. He'd gotten into some pretty bad habits in that regard over the last few months thanks to Madoka and her not-very-subtle exhibitionist streak she discovered within herself after Wing Bonding with Gregory.

Madoka scowled slightly at the printouts, to Gregory's amusement. She had spent some hours today and this evening on those reports of last night's action. She turned towards him and raised a blonde eyebrow. "Triage, Gregory-kun?"

Yosuga - who had been sitting at Gregory's computer desk reading their preliminary " _So You're A Newly Released Sekirei_ " handout and making notes - turned the office chair around to face the couch. Gregory could not resist eyeing her long, tan, bare legs for just a split second before raising his gaze to the dark-haired Sekirei's face. She answered Madoka's question, "Triage. The assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties."

Gregory – and Madoka – stared at Yosuga, who looked back and forth between the two on the couch.

Yosuga shrugged, "What? I read about it last night on Wikipedia. After the accident scene yesterday it seemed relevant."

With a chuckle, Gregory nodded agreement. "Yes, Yosuga-san, very relevant. And it's what we have to do when in situations like yesterday."

"Assignment of degrees of urgency," Madoka repeated. "So this is what you do to decide who to help and in what order?"

"Yes, just so, Mado-chan," Gregory answered. "There's actually a great deal of research that's been done on establishing the most effective processes for triage in accidents and disasters. And depending on the nature of the emergency there's different kinds of triage systems that works best. For what we're doing with the emergency scanners it's probably best to keep things as simple as possible."

Gregory handed both Madoka and Yosuga a laminated credit-card-sized "cheat sheet". "Read these, and keep them with you, please."

The sturdy cards provided a color-coded chart:

I Acute – Immediate Treatment – Arterial lesions, internal haemorrhage, major amputations

II Severe – Rapid Treatment – Minor amputations, flesh wounds, fractures and dislocations

III Minor – Treat when practical – Minor lacerations, sprains, abrasions

IV Terminal – No or small chance of survival – Severe injuries, rapid blood loss

"Gregory-kun," Madoka asked, "why is the worst injury listed last instead of first?"

Yosuga answered before Gregory could, a habit of hers that Gregory had quickly noticed and to which he was trying to adjust. He was determined that he would not get angry at being cut off or preempted by a girl who's perception of the world around her probably made her feel as though everyone else was moving in slow motion. He did have to remind himself regularly not to get irritated by this tendency of hers, though.

The slender Sekirei said, in a thoughtful tone of voice, "I would guess that it's because you are supposed to ignore victims lower on the chart in favor of one's who are higher on the list. And people who have obviously fatal injuries, but who just haven't quite gotten around to dying yet, should be ignored in favor of people with lesser, treatable, injuries. Am I right, Gregory-san?"

"Just so, Yosuga-san."

"What? But…" Madoka tried to protest.

Gregory put a hand on her knee to cut her off, knowing exactly what her objection would be. He spoke gently, "Yes, it's a grim thing, Mado-chan. Triage is brutal and it's terrible. But it's also absolutely critical. Emergency responders can waste the time it would take to save ten people's lives trying, and failing, to save one hopeless case. Triage is all about deciding who you _should_ help, not just who you _can_ help, Mado-chan."

The blonde healer responded, "I… I never considered that. That is very true and it must be a terrible thing for those police and fire and ambulance personnel, Gregory-kun."

Gregory nodded agreement, "Yes, it's one of the worst parts of their jobs, no doubt." He gently squeezed Madoka's knee and she met his eyes. Gregory could tell she was upset at even the idea of deliberately leaving someone to die when they were not dead yet.

"Mado-chan," Gregory continued, "for _you_ though… you should probably consider IV's to be above I's. Because an ambulance crew can't save someone who's mortally injured but who's still alive but… you… you might be able to. You likely _can_ do so."

He smiled crookedly at his little blonde Sekirei and added, "Probably as important, though a bit selfish, we need to remember _why we're doing this_. We're not out there trying to increase vehicle accident survivability in Shin Tokyo, Mado-chan. That's not _really_ out goal, right? We're doing this so that you can learn how to treat critical injuries in an emergency situation. And experience staving off fatal bleeding from a neck puncture, for instance, is probably more important than experience in healing road rash or even reattaching a finger."

Madoka considered this and nodded, "I agree, Gregory-kun, with both the idea that I should try to save the most badly injured first _and_ that I am doing this to gain critical experience and I should not lose sight of that fact. It is very easy to lose track of the big picture when you are facing a scene like we had last night."

"I know, Mado-chan. You did wonderfully though. You and Yosuga-san both." Gregory turned and smiled at Yosuga. "I was immensely impressed with both of you. For a first time crisis scene you both did very well."

Gregory held up the small sheaf of hardcopy they had each been reading earlier in the evening. A printout of all three's written descriptions of Sunday night's events and their own actions as well as their thinking for the decisions they individually made during the crisis.

"Remember that we can nitpick our choices no matter what we choose to do or choose not to do. But that's not why we write reports of what we did after an action situation. All three of us sitting down and writing exactly what happened and what our responses were to events as they happened is an invaluable aid in helping all of us do better next time."

Madoka grumbled with a pout showing up on her full lips, "But Gregory-kun, it is really a pain. Trying to remember exactly what I did and when and why, even a day later, it is really difficult."

Agreeing, Gregory nodded, "It is a pain. But earlier tonight us reading and reviewing these reports together and learning from them was such a big deal I can't even express how important it was. You two both just absolutely rock as far as I'm concerned. Both in what you did at the scene last night and in how you've handled the after action debriefing and analysis. Veterans of emergency services and critical response units would be hard pressed to handle the after action debriefing as calmly and as well as you two have. You're both just awesome, I mean that."

Both Yosuga and Madoka smiled, happy with Gregory's compliments. They received little if any positive feedback in the MBI Sekirei Labs from the Researchers or the tutors who were brought in to give them at least a basic education. Gregory's unstinting praise of them was very much appreciated, especially given that neither of them had enjoyed the process of writing their individual reports or going over each other's statements. It was entirely too easy to fall into the habit of criticizing every choice you made. Even worse, it was easy to get in the habit of criticizing every choice the other people made.

Keeping the report writing and the after-action review positive and constructive was where Gregory's temperament and experience in teaching paid substantial dividends.

Yosuga tucked the cheat sheet card in with her personal notes then asked, "Gregory-san, where did you get these cards?"

Gregory removed his hand from Madoka's bare leg and straightened up on the couch before answering. "Ah. Karen and I, you know, my wife… we volunteered as relief workers for the Red Cross in several disasters. Notably during the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. We weren't paramedics or anything, just grunt workers. But we had to have training, which included the triage systems. So I still had those cards from then."

Yosuga and Madoka glanced at each other then let the subject drop.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence Gregory cleared his throat and asked, "Mado-chan, did you happen to get the name of the boy that you… ah… kept from dying?"

"No, Gregory-kun. Was I supposed to? I did not think to get his name. I had intended to try and remove or dull his memories of the accident, given what he likely witnessed, but I had no opportunity to do any mental Redaction. All of my attention was on repairing his physical injuries."

With a grimace, Gregory shook his head, "No, I didn't really expect you to get his name. I was just hoping you had. We need to try to find out who he is and keep an eye on him as much as practical. He was _dead_ , Mado-chan, and you returned some semblance of life to his body. And we're the _only people who know about it._ So when he starts developing a need to drink blood or eat brains we're the only people who are going to know what is going on."

Yosuga and Madoka both stared, astonished, at Gregory. Madoka found her voice first, "What do you mean, Gregory-kun? Why… what…"

"He's _undead_ now, Mado-chan! His soul had already left his body yet he's still alive! There's a word for that: _undead_! We have to keep an eye on him in case the worst happens."

Again, Yosuga and Madoka just stared at Gregory, unable to respond for several long moments to this unexpected turn in their discussion.

"Gregory-san… there's no such thing as vampires or zombies," Yosuga eventually averred resolutely.

He protested, "That we know of! There was no such thing as mind-reading super powered sex goddesses either until just a few months ago. Nothing would surprise me now!" He looked back and forth between the two young women then slumped his shoulders, "Fine, but in 15 years if there's an outbreak of vampirism in Shin Tokyo, it isn't my fault!"

Madoka, blushing furiously at being even obliquely referred to as a super powered sex goddess, hit him with one of the couch's throw pillows as Yosuga finally cracked up laughing.

v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v  
v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v

Later that night Madoka's attention was completely focused on her own sex goddess: _that girl. H_ er favorite subject to study in the entire world, even if she had to use her Ashikabi's sensorium to experience sex with _that girl_.

"Yes, oh god, yes, yes… fuck… unh!" She cried out as _that girl_ wrapped her legs around Madoka's waist and dug her heels into her ass muscles, pulling her deeper and harder into her hot, tight, slickness. It was the most wonderful sensation Madoka could ever imagine. Then - like every time - when _that girl_ hooked her ankles together around Madoka's back it sent Madoka completely over the edge into (yet another) intense, mind-blanking, climax. Every muscle in Madoka's body seemed to be trying to contribute to each gush of pleasure that shot from her, through her, and into her.

Afterwards gasping for breath, both Madoka and her Ashikabi lay entwined as their orgasm slowly receded. Madoka's awareness of how she was completely within Gregory's mind just as he was completely within her body brought a contented smile to her face as well as amusing her. It was a fact that she and Gregory were likely the only lovers in the history of sex who could justly call it "their" orgasm. No matter that Gregory was still unaware of this fact.

Madoka: { _Gregory-kun, I love you so._ }

The Farspoken words connected with her Ashikabi's awareness in spite of his minimal and entirely latent metapsychic talents.

Gregory - laying atop Madoka and between her legs but holding himself up on his elbows somewhat so as to not crush her uncomfortably - lifted his head from where he'd been gently kissing the side of her neck in post-coital bliss.

Gregory: { _Mado-chanLover? How..._ }

She reached up and caressed his cheek, gazing up into his green eyes in the dim light of the bedroom. She let the thoughts form in his awareness.

Madoka: { _When we are close like this it is possible. It is less and less that I can casually hear your thoughts; you have started putting up a basic shield in your day-to-day life that is at least adequate for preserving your privacy. But after we have made love there are no barriers between us for at least a moment._ }

Gregory smiled down at her, still breathing deeply due to his recent sexual efforts, adoration for her shining in his expression and the tenor of his mind-speech.

Gregory: { _If it only lasts a short time then I want you to know how much I love you, Mado-chanLover._ }

She lifted her head to kiss him, a short yet sweet meeting of their lips, which resulted in no Wing Flare. _That_ had already happened, less than half-an-hour earlier when Gregory's 1.4 picoseconds worth of resistance to having sex with Madoka in the same bed he used to share with his wife had crumbled.

She said, aloud, "I know, Gregory-kun. And I love how you love me."

Gregory, arms growing fatigued, nodded and rolled to the side, pulling Madoka over so they were both lying on their sides facing each other.

Madoka murmured, "I want you to know that I saw in your mind your concern about how much I risked in saving that boy. Know, please, that now that I am aware of where those lines are I will avoid them in the future. As much as I wanted to help him I would not have deliberately risked my life or yours to save him."

He said, "I figured as much and realized you'd simply gotten carried away in the moment, not knowing what you were doing. It was amazing you could save him like you did. But I agree it's probably a good idea to avoid risking so much in the future. At least… if you _do_ decide to make that gamble you'll know for sure that you're making it and what the stakes are."

Madoka closed her eyes and snuggled in close, resting her cheek against Gregory's only-sparsely-haired chest. Still feeling the warm glow of happy, fulfilling sex suffusing her entire being she held onto her Ashikabi, both physically and metapsychically, sharing her happiness and contentedness with him.

And incidentally erasing just a little bit more of the ghost of Gregory O'Donnell's wife from his thoughts.

"Oh, and Gregory-kun? If Yosu-chan does not find an Ashikabi quickly I want you to wing bond her."

Half-asleep Gregory mumbled, "Okay, whatever you want, Mado-chan."

"I love you, Gregory-kun."

"I love you, Mado-chan."

…

"Wait… say again?! What was that about Yosuga-san? Mado-chan? Mado-chan?"

v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v  
v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v

The next morning after Gregory left the apartment for work, Madoka and Yosuga got to work on their to-do list. First, a visit to the Narushima Bicycle Shop.

Since it was still rather chilly outside this early in the day the two Sekirei called for a taxi to take them from the O'Donnell apartment to the specialty bicycle shop where Madoka had purchased her Cervelo bike. After tying her bicycle onto the taxi's bike rack the two girls settled into the back seat of the taxi.

Madoka took Yosuga's hand and Farspoke her on the intimate mode, where no other Sekirei would be able to snoop.

Madoka: { _#caution YosuchanSister, for the ride to the bicycle store let us use Farspeech. This way we can talk without concern about MBI snooping through our unsafe phones. We do not want to take the unsafe phones offline; it would be suspicious and raise red flags on our file. Occasionally it would be written off as normal signal loss and other insignificant chatter but as long as it is you and I who need to talk we can use Farspeech for safe communication. When it is GregoryAshikabi we usually pull the batteries from our phones or we chose to discuss matters that we do not care if MBI overhears, since GregoryAshikabi is difficult to reach with casual Farspeech, even on the intimate mode._ }

Yosuga: { _Okay, goodideasmartthinking MadoSister. So let me make sure I have this right. Since we're traveling from the apartment and we are going to be using the MBI cards on our errands this morning we make sure to carry our unsafe phones? So that the location tracking we assume MBI is doing shows us moving around the city correctly, since they're going to know where we use the card anyway?_ }

Madoka: { _#agreement Yes, just so. We do not know what MBI calls their different departments but we refer to the part of their organization that is in charge of collecting information about us Sekirei and our Ashikabi as 'MBI Intelligence'. We assume that enforcement of the rules - and whatever other whims strike Minaka-san - is a separate department. We refer to them as 'MBI Security'. If we do not give MBI Intelligence any information, it would be suspicious. If we are suspicious enough then we assume MBI Intelligence will resort to assigning less automated processes, more human specialists, to the job of tracking us and our Ashikabi and other associates. Thus, GregoryAshikabi determined that it was a better idea to give them information but to make sure that the information they collect is only trivia or is possibly even actively misleading. We are going about our business today 'publicly'. Because though what you and I are doing today is important it is not critical that it be hidden from MBI or – just as importantly – the other Ashikabi who have compromised MBI's databases, such as creepKakizaki who works for bastardHigaIzumi. #disgustanger_ }

Yosuga considered this as she flipped her own brand new "unsafe" phone repeatedly in her hand. She had purchased the same Samsung model that Madoka had received as a Christmas gift from her Ashikabi since Madoka could easily show her how to use it. Madoka had also provided her with one "safe" phone from their stash of pre-paid burner phones but that phone was kept in her purse, powered off, while she was traveling and shopping "publicly".

Yosuga: { _It makes sense. #impressedapproval This is a good plan, MadochanSister. Much better than what I had thought of; just not using my MBI card unless it was an emergency and trying to stay off MBI's radar that way._ }

Madoka: { _I hope it is a good plan. We will not know though unless MBI tries to crack our efforts and we then will find out if our plan was good enough. GregoryAshikabi says that is always the nature of defending yourself from espionage. All too often you do not know if you did a good enough job until it is too late to try something different. Just try to think in terms of public or hidden when you leave home. Which of those two modes you are going to be in while you are out and about will determine which phone you should carry and use, whether you should be carrying and using your MBI Card, if you should be using untraceable cash, and so on. #sardonicamusement It does take a little getting used to, thinking in these terms all of the time._ }

Yosuga: { _#agreement I can see how that would indeed take some getting used to. And just one mistake could take a great deal of effort to correct. Especially if that mistake clued MBI Intelligence in on the fact that you are using these 'burner phones' and making other efforts to mislead their automated data collection. I assume that if they found out you were even trying such things they would just bite the bullet and assign human resources to tail you all of the time from that point on? #happysmile What would I do without you to help me so, MadoSister?_ }

Madoka: { _#smile_ _Really it is more GregoryAshikabi than me, Yosu-chan. If not for him I would know very little of how to keep out of MBI's eyesight._ }

Yosuga opened the encrypted notes file on her phone, looked for their agenda for the day, and then changed to speaking aloud. "So, Mado-chan, we have to buy me a new bicycle. This is so that the two of us can travel around more easily than taxis or on foot, because me carrying you around on my back as I jump around from building roof to building roof would be inconvenient, right?"

"Yes, Yosu-chan. I love my bicycle, it is very liberating! I think you will love having one too. And it is not my fault I cannot jump across building roofs like you can! Mah, so cruel, reminding me of my shortcomings!"

Yosuga laughed softly at Madoka's huffy expression then resumed examining her to-do list. "So, after we get me a bike, we pick up a high quality duffle bag for me to use and a couple more for you. Then we'll make the daily ATM withdrawal at a nearby post office. _Then_ we ride the bicycles back up to the Shinjuku Train Station where we'll rent me a storage locker to keep my duffel full of yen until I find an Ashikabi and have a more settled living situation. Does that sound like it?"

"Yes, that sounds like the plan. Come on, we are here at the bicycle shop! Oh, I am so excited! You will love the Cervelo bicycles, I promise!"

v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v

Walking with their bicycles away from the Narushima Bicycle Shop and its weeping-with-gratitude sales clerk, Madoka pointed to the northeast and told Yosuga, "Right over there, about a block away, is a huge sports park, the Meijijingu Gaien, which contains several stadiums for baseball as well as golf driving ranges and a large running and bicycling track. We will go over there and practice riding your new bicycle."

She shifted to Farspeech on the intimate mode in order to tell Yosuga her actual plan for the rest of the morning.

Madoka: {#hopefullybeingclever _Actually, YosuSister, you go to the sports park and I will ride my bicycle to the…_ }

Madoka paused, looking for a way to describe the Ebisu safe house without saying where it was.

Yosuga: { _The Other Place?_ }

Madoka: { _#pleasedrelief Yes, the Other Place. It is about 3.5 kilometers from here so it is not a terribly far bicycle ride. I need to go there to make sure everything is okay and water the plants, pick up any junk mail accumulating at the door and suchlike. GregoryLover nor I have been there in a while due to spending the weekend at the Grand Hyatt and then staying at the O'Donnell apartment with you, so I need to at least drop by and take care of minor housekeeping chores. Here, I need you to keep my unsafe phone on you so that the GPS shows the two of us are at the Meijijingu Gaien riding our bicycles. I will meet you back here at the bicycle shop in two hours. Then we will go have lunch, okay? So work up an appetite at the Meijijingu Gaien!_ }

Yosuga: { _#cheerfulagreement Yes that will be fine MadoSister. #Query Why is the salesman at the bicycle shop still weeping? Just how much money is the ¥700,000 we paid for this bicycle?_ }

Madoka: { _#amusement I asked Gregory-kun the same thing. Without getting into how much yen different jobs pay and how hard it is to qualify for those jobs, just know that ¥700,000 would take Gregory-kun two months to earn at his professional job as an English teacher in high school. And that does not consider that he must pay living expenses out of his income. In terms of how long it would take Gregory-kun to save up that much money if he saved all of the money he had at the end of the month after paying rent and bills for electricity and his payment on his Jeep and such? It would take him maybe a year and a half to save up that much. If he was willing to eliminate all of the extras he spends his money on now and save every scrap of money he could._ }

Yosuga: { _#astonishment That means the ¥500,000 we get from the MBIPlatinumCard via the ATM every day is actually a great deal of money, isn't it?}_

 _Madoka: {Yes, it really is. It is more than Gregory-kun's gross monthly income by a significant amount. Gregory was shocked when we discovered that the only limit on cash withdrawal from the MBIPlatinumCard was the normal daily limit common to Japanese bankcards, ¥500,000.}_

 _Yosuga: {So these are extremely expensive bicycles for anyone working at a regular job. Or even for someone working at a good job. No wonder the salesman is so very happy about making a sale!_ }

Madoka: { _#laughter &agreement Yes, he likely does not sell more than one of these very high end bicycles a month, maybe only one every two months. We really did just make his day with buying the Cervelo R8 and the accessories you needed. I admit I was tempted to purchase that brand new Cervelo P10 track bicycle and let MBI eat the ¥1,000,000. Did you see, it only weighs 5 kilograms! Even with the tires and seat!_}

Yosuga: { _I assume that is remarkably lightweight for a bicycle?_ }

Madoka: { _Gregory's reaction to the 6.8 kilogram gross weight of my R8 was to say that it was an "amazing accomplishment of materials science and engineering". He was extremely impressed so I assume there is good reason. But the P10, I resisted the temptation. The R series is a far better street bicycle and the P series is only superior on a track. Have I mentioned how much I love my bicycle, YosuSister? #gleehappinessamusement We can thank MBI for their generosity in sharing the wealth they have made from everything they stole from the Sekirei and our ship._ }

Aloud Madoka said, "To the Meijijingu Gaien to practice on the bicycles, Yosu-chan!" She then winked to her friend, handed her own unsafe-phone to Yosuga, then bicycled off towards the Ebisu safe house.

Yosuga stashed Madoka's unsafe phone in her shoulder bag then headed towards the sports park on novice, unsteady, wobbly bicycle wheels.

v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v  
v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v

Lunch was at Madoka's favorite Starbucks, near the Omotesandō in Shibuya. They were joined by 76 Midorino, who Madoka had contacted using the new Hushmail encrypted SMS/Text app on her safe phone.

She had not seen Midorino in days and wanted to give the lonely girl an excuse to get out of Kohaku-san's apartment for at least a little while. Madoka also wanted to find out if the strawberry blonde Sekirei would be interested in doing more photography. She had several ideas for photo setups that would suit Midorino very well and Madoka wanted to offer the other blonde the chance to meet up during the coming weekend for another modeling shoot.

After introducing 76 Midorino to 44 Yosuga (and Yosuga promising to spar with Midorino sometime soon so Midorino could prove to her that the glaive was far better than a pair of sai), Madoka found herself telling Midorino the story of rescuing Yosuga from the clutches of Higa Izumi and his Sekirei.

Afterwards, Madoka's two friends heard about how she had fond memories of this coffee shop since it was where her Ashikabi had given her the first Christmas present that she had ever received.

Things like that were important, both girls agreed.

Yosuga smiled, listening to Madoka talk about Gregory O'Donnell. Never in a million years would Yosuga have thought her diminutive blonde friend would be so devoted to another person. Yosuga dearly loved her friend but she was not blind to Madoka's faults. And the blonde had many. She was shallow, vain, self-centered to the point of narcissism while somehow also being riddled with a great deal of insecurity and a terrible self-image. In spite of being in the top percentile of Sekirei intelligence, she hid her brilliance and spent her time and effort on trivia such as makeup, clothes, what musicians or idols were popular this week.

At times she drove Yosuga to distraction.

However, Madoka had changed, dramatically, in the months after she was released into Shin Tokyo to find an Ashikabi.

Yosuga would go so far as to say her friend had blossomed, had grown into her potential. Perhaps she had maybe even grown up.

The shy, timid, pretty girl Yosuga had spent her childhood with was now beyond beautiful. Past the physical growth was the more important inner growth. Madoka was shedding her insecurities, replacing her poor self-image, shallow values, and selfishness with genuine confidence, a firm sense of self-worth, and caring about someone else more than she cared about herself.

Madoka was still herself; she hadn't changed into another person. She still had more interest in fashion and makeup than she had in politics or science. She still spent more time picking out just the right accessories to go with her phone than she spent learning about medical procedures she might duplicate with her Redaction metafaculties.

She was still Madoka. But better.

The old Madoka would not have made a friend like 76 Midorino. She would have likely found the somewhat-airheaded bubbly younger girl irritating or intimidating. Now, though, she comfortably chatted and laughed with the other blonde, demonstrating complete comfort with the other girl's presence.

Yosuga had always admired her friend's physical magnificence but now she was learning to appreciate Madoka's growing inner beauty as well.

And all because of the most unlikely Ashikabi in the Sekirei Plan, Gregory O'Donnell?

So it would seem.

The girls were finishing the sandwiches and pastries that they'd ordered for their lunch, enjoying the warmth inside the Starbucks. Yosuga and Madoka had been more than a bit chilled after the last two hours of bicycling in the late February overcast. Yosuga round and round the bicycle tracks at the Meijijingu Gaien sports park and Madoka from bicycling halfway across Shibuya Ward to the "Other Place" to take care of housekeeping chores there.

Yosuga was glad that within the two hours of practice time she had, she'd gotten much better at controlling her new Cervelo bicycle. At first she thought she was going to crash every time she tried to take off or stop. But she eventually learned to carefully control her Sekirei speed and mastered the trick of balance that riding a bicycle required. It was fun. Not as fun as leaping from high rise buildings but still, fun.

Midorino was enthusiastic about their bicycles and had already vowed to talk her Ashikabi into getting them both Cervelo R8 bikes. Madoka gave her the name and address of the Narushima Bike Shop with a grin to Yosuga at the thought of the soon-to-be very happy sales staff.

As Madoka finished the last bit of her tuna sandwich on wheat she Farspoke to both of her companions.

Madoka: { _This weekend Gregory and I are going to be at the Other Place. Yosuga-chan, you should do what we often do on weekends and pick out a Five Star hotel and let MBI treat you to a weekend of delicious food, salon treatments, and manicures and pedicures. Then rejoin us Sunday night back at the apartment?_ }

Yosuga: { _That sounds like a good idea. I expect you and your Ashikabi would like some time to yourself and I've been feeling like I'm intruding._ }

Madoka: { _#alarm No, not at all, YosugaSister! I do not feel like you have been intruding and I do not believe Gregory-kun feels that way either. It is just that since none of us know what your future holds as far as an Ashikabi goes we cannot take you to the Other Place and we really prefer spending our time there over the apartment. It is not you! Believe me. I wish you could be with us all of the time!_ }

Madoka's mindspeech was clear and earnest, leaving Yosuga no doubt as to her honesty. It was touching to the tall Sekirei that Madoka and her Ashikabi both had welcomed her into their lives so much. Though maybe neither of them would be happy with how much of their lives Yosuga had peeked into.

Trying to keep her mindspeech clear of any mild guilt from her peeking last night into the master bedroom of the apartment with her Farsenses while Gregory and Madoka had sex, Yosuga replied.

Yosuga: { _Thank you, MadokaSister. #warmaffectionlove Still, I think it would be good for you and Gregory-san to have a weekend to yourselves. You've done so much for me and I am sure that I will be fine enjoying a weekend at the Grand Hyatt. I only got to see a little of it when we were there the weekend I was released but I remember their room service was excellent._ }

Madoka: {#smile _Good, then that will be the plan. When we get to the apartment you can use the computer to easily make reservations for a nice room for Friday and Saturday night. You can jump home to the apartment Sunday evening faster than you could take a taxi so we would see you then. And MidoPrettyGirl, you will be meeting me Saturday to spend the early part of the day shooting modeling pictures, right?_ }

Midorino: {#excitement _That's the plan! #confusion &query What is this Other Place you and Yosuga-chan spoke of, BigSisterMadoka_?}

Madoka: { _That is what we call the safe house that GregoryAshikabi and I have. Remember us talking to you and Kohaku-san about finding another place to rent in addition to his apartment, a place that no one knows about so that you two would have somewhere to hide if things get dangerous?_ }

Midorino: { _Oh, yes! #excitement I remember and KohakuLove found us a place like that! And we are buying food and supplies to be in it in case we have to hide out there. #happycontentment That my AwesomeKohakuILoveHimSoMuch is doing things like this to make us safe makes me very happy. And the place we got is really awesome! I want to show it to you!_ }

Yosuga smiled at the other girl's bubbly enthusiasm as Madoka tried to temper her enthusiasm.

Madoka: { _Remember though, MidoPrettyGirl, a safe house is supposed to be secret and no one but you and Kohaku-san are supposed to know about it, okay? If anyone else finds out about it then it will not be as safe for the two of you, right?_ }

Midorino: { _Right, BigSisterMadoka! It's mine and KohakuAshikabi's Other Place so no one else should know where it is. It's in Shibuya Ward._ }

Madoka rubbed her forehead as Yosuga tried to stifle a laugh.

Madoka: {#patientexplaination _See, you should not say where it is, MidoPrettyGirl. You should not let anyone know where it is unless you and your Ashikabi are sure you want to share that information with them._ }

Midorino: { _Oh you are completely right, BigSisterMado. Top Secret! It's right behind the Napoli Pizzeria, in Shibuya Ward, only a block away from the United Nations University._ }

Madoka facepalmed as Yosuga continued her efforts to not crack up laughing.

Midorino: { _#clearmentalimage of the location plus an image of the outside of the three-story office/residential unit the safe house was in._ }

With Yosuga now laughing and trying to cover it up with a fake cough, Madoka just shook her head.

Madoka: { _Yosuchan? Just… just pretend you never heard that._ }

Midorino: { _The street address is 150-0002 Tōkyō-to, Shibuya-ku, Shibuya, 1 Chome−5−9._ }

Yosuga: { _Of course, MadoSister. Oh, Mido-chan, you are just the sweetest, you really are. You are precious, I am glad MadoSister introduced us and hope we can be friends._ }

Midorino agreed and just laughed along with Yosuga, not entirely sure why the dark haired Sekirei was laughing but caught up in the humor anyway.

Yosuga set her almost empty strawberry Frappuccino down onto the small table that the three occupied next to one of the windows that allowed the two to watch their (very well chained up) Cervelo bicycles outside. She then asked aloud, "Mado-chan, you told me how you've been practicing with your healing, or Redaction as it's more properly called. Have you thought to use your Redaction to make your Ashikabi healthier or even better off physically than he is now?"

Quickly running through her head the likely course of such a conversation – as well as considering the problems Farspeech conversations had with people like Midorino who simply were not devious enough to hide things that should be hidden while sharing Farspeech with someone – Madoka agreed silently that it should be okay to have this conversation aloud. She answered, "I have thought of it but am reluctant to do too much. I told you about the disaster a few weeks ago when I first used my Norito in an attempt to help settle Gregory's mind through the obsession that was growing. I learned a lot about the Law of Unintended Consequences then. I admit I am a bit hesitant to experiment on my Ashikabi at this point because of my experiences that week."

Yosuga nodded her understanding. "I can understand that. I can't imagine how terrifying that week must have been for you. But what about using your ability like you used to, unfocused but general healing? If you hit him with a Norito every morning with the intention to just generally undo some of the damage time has done to his body then it's not real likely that something would backfire, right? Focusing on a desire just for him to be healthier and maybe younger?"

Madoka sipped her own Frappuccino and considered the suggestion. After a moment she agreed, "You are likely right. There is not a lot that could go badly with just wanting someone to be healthier and to restore them against the ways time has worn them down. It would be nice for Gregory if he had the endurance and strength he had when he was younger. And though he would never admit it I know that he dislikes the effects aging has had on his appearance. Things like his receding hairline, the loss of elasticity in his skin, even, you know, less, um, sexual desire than a young man."

Yosuga giggled softly, "Is that a problem then?"

This question captured Midorino's attention completely.

Madoka rolled her eyes and shook her head, "No, it is not really what I would call a problem. But what is delightful once a night would probably be far more delightful a couple of times a day and three times a night, yes?"

Midorino's eyes bugged out at that and Yosuga had to cover her mouth with her hand again to stifle her own laughter. "Oh my, the look on your face, Mado-chan. But yes, you should think about ways to help with these things. No other Ashikabi has a Sekirei who can do for them what you can do for Gregory. You should take advantage of that! So, what would you think of other than a general desire to increase his health, when you used your Norito on him?"

"Hmmmm," Madoka considered the question carefully. "I read several articles on related subjects during the week that I was trying to fix the mistake I made in Gregory-kun's mind that caused him to forget who I was for a short time. Happiness is a reflection of a person's blood chemistry and brain chemistry. People settle into a natural level of happiness that is determined by their genetics regardless of circumstance. The hedonic treadmill, it is called. You adjust normally your 'pace' to match the treadmill of your circumstances. So though GregoryAshikabi is happier with me in his life than he would be without me, he still levels out to a level of happiness within his normal range quickly. I could do something about that I think."

"Brilliant, Mado-chan! So, how would you put that in words or in your thoughts as you used your Norito?"

"Something like a small permanent increase in Gregory's baseline Dopamine, Oxytocin, Endorphin, and Serotonin levels? Even more important would be permanently increasing his testosterone production back to where it was 20 years ago. Testosterone has a great deal of influence on the mind and body, especially for men. And it drops in normal production dramatically at the age Gregory is at. Humans have a natural range of 'normal' in all of those neurochemicals and hormones, all controlled by their genetics. So some people are just naturally happier, or more confident, or more social depending on where they fall in the range of 'normal' thanks to who their parents were. Some men are genetically programmed to produce a great amount of testosterone and growth hormone which in turn makes them large, muscular, energetic athletic types naturally. They also would have much higher than average sex drives. I could try to change where Gregory is on the 'normal' line for those neurochemicals and hormones I suppose, as long as I keep his new 'normal' within the bounds of what can be found in natural human genetics, right?"

Yosuga nodded as Midorino watched the two with a blank expression on her beautiful face. Yosuga agreed with Madoka's idea though. "That sounds about right, as long as you were firmly keeping in mind that you wanted the changes to be incremental and within the human range. Someone who's genetics built a body and mind that was at the high end of production and utilization of those neurochemicals and hormones would be a far happier, more energetic, more confident, person. That's what you're saying, right?"

"Yes. Before I went any further than just general movement along the 'normal' range with manipulating his neurochemistry and hormones I would want to dig into the research in a great deal more depth. But for a daily general 'be healthy, be happy, be youthful and energetic' Norito? As long as I keep in mind that my goal is to do no harm, to only make incremental changes, and to work within the normal human range for things like, say, testosterone production, I think it would be helpful for him." Madoka smiled at Yosuga and took her hand across the table, "Thank you for mentioning this. I have been reluctant to even try but if you think it is a good idea I will see if Gregory will agree."

Yosuga smiled and squeezed her friend's hand. "As long as you're clear in your mind as to what your goals are then I think it would be greatly helpful for him. He is a wonderful guy as he is but can he be himself but better? _You_ are, now, compared to who you were a year ago. Yourself, but better."

Madoka ducked her head in embarrassment at the compliment, "Do you think so? And you think I could help Gregory just be… Gregory but better? Like himself with his younger body but still with the experience and wisdom that he has acquired in his life?"

"Yes, I think you could, Mado-chan. Even better than his youthful body. At least you should talk to him about it and see if he'd be willing to let you try, huh? And I would be glad to help you research more specific things to try as well."

Madoka smiled and looked out the window at the chilly February sky, expression going distant and vague. She murmured, "Gregory-kun with the sex drive he had at 20? Yes, I think that would be something worth working towards."

"That is so unfair," Midorino protested. "I still haven't convinced Kohaku-kun that we should be sharing a bed. You are so far ahead, Mado-chan! Can you help me with how to convince Kohaku-kun to start with the sex soon?"

Yosuga laughed at Madoka's expression and stood up from the table, "Come on, let's go. We need to stop at the train station and rent storage lockers for these duffle bags before we return to the apartment for the evening. Mado-chan, you can talk to Gregory-san about this tonight. I think he'll be excited about the idea. And Mido-chan you should absolutely get Mado to help you with that."

Madoka sighed and rested her forehead in her palm. "Thanks for that, Yosu-chan."

Midorino cheered, "Yay! Mado-chan is going to help me with the sex!"

Yosuga almost fell over from laughing so hard.

v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v  
v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v

After affectionate hugs and kisses for both Madoka and Yosuga, Midorino departed for the apartment she shared with her Ashikabi. Madoka and Yosuga unchained their bikes and cycled from the b-side Omotesandō Starbucks to the enormous Shinjuku train station that was not far from the O'Donnell apartment. The two Sekirei searched out a pair of storage lockers for rent side by side. Finding two excellent secure lockers Madoka and Yosuga pre-paid for a year on each locker then stored their new canvas and carbon fiber duffle bags within the lockers. They committed the new lock combinations to memory, double-checked each other's lockers to make sure they had the combinations right, and then headed for the west exit where their Cervelo bikes were secured.

Madoka commented, "Easy enough to come to this station each day and pick up our bags then visit one of the many ATM's within easy walking distance for the daily withdrawals. Secure storage at the, um, Other Place has run out of room so this will help a lot. And this way if something happens to our other secure storage we will have this as a backup."

"Exactly, Mado-chan," Yosuga agreed. "Easy access, traffic goes through here 24 hours a day, so no one will look sideways at us for being here any time of day or night, and we can arrive or depart either on foot or on one of the millions of trains that service this place daily. It's perfect."

When they had reached the last wide hallway before the exit Madoka paused and then pulled Yosuga along as she went into one of the many businesses that operated along the passageways inside Shinjuku Station, a gift shop as it happened.

Yosuga looked confused as she asked, "What are we doing in here, Mado-chan?"

"Give me a moment, Yosu-chan. I want to look at these, ah, magazines."

The verbal reply was followed quickly with a Farspoken answer to Yosuga's question.

Madoka: { _My Farsense picked up someone in this store who has a significant level of metapsychic ability but is not a Sekirei. I wanted to see if I could find whoever this person is and see if they might be a potential Ashikabi._ }

Yosuga blinked in surprise and looked around the small gift shop with its narrow aisles offering news magazines and candy and drinks of all sorts for busy commuters coming and going from Shinjuku Station.

Yosuga: { _Who is it, can you tell?_ }

Madoka: { _Yes, it is the young man working at the cash register. See him? Kind of tall? He is absolutely a latent metapsychic and has Ashikabi potential._ }

Yosuga: { _The good looking guy with the broad shoulders?_ }

Madoka took a minute to pick out a magazine and handed it to Yosuga.

Madoka: { _Yes, him. Go up to the cash register and pay for this and talk to him while you are there. Flirt a little if you can. We need to see if you React to him, Yosu-chan. And I will watch with my Farsight as well as my Redaction to see if I can tell what exactly happens, okay?_ }

Taking the magazine and looking from Madoka to the young man at the cash register Yosuga looked very unsure about this course of action.

Yosuga: { _#apprehension &trepidation MadoSister are you sure? What if he kisses me but I don't know anything about him! Are you sure?_}

Madoka: { _If you do not react, then you do not react. But it is at least worth trying. Do you mind if I use a Redaction Probe to connect to your mind while you speak to him? It is very difficult to establish one if I am not physically touching my target but I think if I make the connection here and you walk over there and I stay still I can maintain the probe so I can see exactly what is happening on a metapsychic level._ }

Yosuga: { _Sure, Mado-chan that's fine/No it isn't fine I don't want to wing bond to a stranger! #abashedembarassment Nevermind, I'm sorry Mado-chan. Okay, establish your Redaction Probe. I'm going over to talk to him._ }

After connecting to Yosuga's metapsychic and mental being with her Redaction Probe, Madoka closed her eyes and focused entirely on the Farsight and Redact image of Yosuga approaching the cashier.

She watched as the Sekirei and the potential Ashikabi spoke to each other. Yosuga spent a few moments at the counter, responding to the young man's efforts at small talk and flirting. Madoka realized she did not need to encourage Yosuga to flirt; her dark haired friend was easily attractive enough to get the young man's attention and he was making the effort to flirt with Yosuga himself.

Madoka watched the metapsychic essence of both as a tendril of metapsychic energy reached out from the young man. In response to this metapsychic "reaching out" a small tendril of metapsychic essence responded from Yosuga. These tendrils never made it as far as reaching the other person, only drifting outwards towards the other a slight bit before failing to connect and retracting.

It was obvious that the young man's metapsychic strength levels simply were not high enough to convince Yosuga's metapsychic core that he was a potential Ashikabi. She realized that she was watching the failure of the potential Ashikabi to establish a reaction in Yosuga. Why did the connection fail, why didn't the tendril reach further from the Ashikabi and why didn't Yosuga's tendril reach hardly beyond her tama core at all? Was it just the level of metapsychic strength in the young man that was inadequate?

Focusing her attention as sharply as she could on what was transpiring, Madoka then saw that in addition to the basic metapsychic strength of the potential Ashikabi vs the activation threshold of Yosuga, there were other factors determining how effective the effort at connection was. In addition to basic metapsychic strength there were number of other factors that seemed to be adding to the potential Ashikabi's appeal or reducing his appeal.

Two factors seemed to be affecting the young man's Overall Metapsychic Power Rating, mostly in a negative way, and thus making it obvious that he would not reach Yosuga's Activation Threshold for Reaction.

First was a set of characteristics both Sekirei and the potential Ashikabi had as part of their personalities and their nature. Characteristics that were checked for compatibility. These characteristics or attributes matched up with either positive/compatible, negative/incompatible, or neutral.

Secondly and lastly there was an effect from both parties that represented the circumstances of their encounter. Madoka could see that Yosuga's reluctance was increasing her Activation Threshold dramatically. The young man's consideration of Yosuga as an attractive woman worth hitting on gave his Metapsychic Power Rating a boost towards reaching Yosuga's Activation Threshold but it was far from enough to actually cause Yosuga to React.

As Yosuga returned from the counter and stood next to Madoka the blonde Sekirei released her Redact probe and closed off her Farsense. She took a moment to consider what she had seen then used her Farsense and Redaction to reevaluate the young man's metapsychic profile, looking specifically for those attributes that added or subtracted so much from his appeal with Yosuga.

Sure enough, she could see them now that she knew what to look for. Twenty different attributes that matched up in some way - positive, negative, or neutral - with those same attributes in a Sekirei. She could see her own set of compatibility attributes as well, now that she knew what to look for (and she saw that she was, coincidentally, more compatible with the young man at the counter than Yosuga was).

Yosuga: { _MadoSister? Did you see what you were looking for? I didn't really feel any kind of reaction from him, though he seemed like a nice guy. A bit too flirty for my taste, maybe. He is attractive, I'll admit that. He certainly seemed confident and well spoken. More your type than mine, I think._ }

Madoka: { _#thoughtfulcontemplation Yes, YosugaSister, I did see something very interesting. It was fascinating; that was the first time I have had the opportunity to actually observe an encounter between a Sekirei and a potential Ashikabi. And, by the way, you are exactly right: he is more my type than yours. Not that it matters, I have my Ashikabi. Let me think on what I saw and hopefully this evening I can talk about it with Gregory-kun and see what he thinks. It was… very informative and I think maybe I learned something important about what makes some Sekirei react to some Ashikabi more than others. And how circumstances can make a big difference in whether or not a Reaction takes place._ }

Aloud, Madoka said, "Let us go, Yosu-chan. I would like to get back to the apartment before Gregory-kun returns home."

The pair then left Shinjuku Station for their secured bicycles.

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v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

 _ **Metapsychics**_

 _ **Sekirei and Metapsychic Terminology**_

 _Activation Threshold_

The arbitrary point that determines how much Metapsychic Power is required to cause a Reaction in a Sekirei. The Activation Threshold is related to the Sekirei's own Metapsychic Power Rating but there are many other (currently unknown) factors that determine what the ultimate Activation Threshold is for each Sekirei.

 _Attribute Compatibility_

Twenty attributes (or characteristics) of a metapsychic's nature which are a factor in how compatible two metapsychics are with each other.

 _Reaction_

A physical and emotional sensation experienced by a Sekirei in the presence of a potential Ashikabi whose Overall Metapsychic Power Rating exceeds that Sekirei's activation threshold. This sensation is highly pleasant for the Sekirei with many similarities to sexual arousal.

 ** _Sekirei Wing Bonding_**

 _Attribute Compatibility_

Among the elements that determine if a Sekirei reacts to a potential Ashikabi (so far all potential Ashikabi have been Terran Humans with detectable levels of latent metapsychic abilities), the primary determinant is the metapsychic strength (the Overall Metapsychic Power Rating or OMPR) of the Ashikabi.

See Notebooks Entry 8 for definitions of the various terms such as OMPR related directly to describing metapsychic's power levels. _(Author's Note: Notebook Entry 8 can be found at the end of NGFOM Chapter 12.)_

Each _potential Ashikabi_ has an Overall Metapsychic Power Rating. This is a measure of how strong a metapsychic he is (Latent or Active seems to not matter). Each _Sekirei_ has an "Activation Threshold" that is based on her own Overall Metapsychic Power Rating (though there are other elements that can cause a Sekirei's Activation Threshold to be higher or lower than simply indicated by her OMPR. These elements will be the subject of a future article).

If a potential Ashikabi has a high enough OMPR to equal or exceed the Sekirei's Activation Threshold he will cause a Reaction in the Sekirei. How powerful this reaction is depends on to what degree he exceeded her activation threshold.

Even if a person has detectable latent metapsychic abilities, (i.e. they are a potential Ashikabi) they may not be able to match a target Sekirei's Activation Threshold and thus will not be able to invoke a Wing Bond with that Sekirei. It is also possible for an Ashikabi to meet or exceed one Sekirei's Activation Threshold and thus be able to Wing Bond her yet not be able to Wing Bond a different Sekirei due to failing to meet or exceed the second Sekirei's Activation Threshold.

Two other elements can have a substantial influence on whether or not the Sekirei will React to the potential Ashikabi. First of these elements is Attribute Compatibility. The second is Situational Modifiers.

Both of these elements establish either a positive bonus to the Ashikabi's OMPR (for purposes of comparing to the activation threshold of the target Sekirei only) or a negative penalty to the Ashikabi's OMPR (for purposes of comparing to the activation threshold of the target Sekirei only).

In this article, we will examine the Attribute Compatibility factor.

There are 20 attributes/characteristics that each Ashikabi and each Sekirei have which their metapsychic cores automatically compare when a potential Ashikabi and a Sekirei meet and the Reaction check begins.

We've assigned each of these attributes an alphabet character (consisting of only consonants minus the letter Y). Each attribute is represented by either an upper case letter or a lower case letter.

For example, the Attribute profile for an Ashikabi might be: bCDfghJKLMNpqrStVWxZ

Twenty attributes, each with an upper case or lower case letter describing it.

What each of these attributes are is a complex question not easily answered. For some it is possible to summarize, such as "this is the attribute that says if the person is passive or if they are assertive". However, even that summation is inadequate to truly describe everything the attribute represents. More research on exactly what each of these 20 attributes/characteristics are will need to be done in the future.

Regardless of what all 20 attributes are, they are compared Ashikabi vs Sekirei and the result of the comparison is an additive, or a subtractive, or a neutral, result for each attribute.

Opposite cases are additive when the Ashikabi presents upper case and the Sekirei presents lower case.  
Opposite cases are subtractive when the Ashikabi presents lower case and the Sekirei presents upper case.  
Same case is neutral.

When a Reaction check begins the Ashikabi's attributes are established then the Sekirei's attributes are compared. Thus, the first line would be the Ashikabi and the second line the Sekirei, as follows:

bCDfghJKLMNpqrStVWxZ

vs

BCdfGhJkLMnPQRSTvwXZ

In our example, the potential Ashikabi (the first row) would receive an additive bonus to his effective Overall Metapsychic Power Rating (for purposes of reaching the Sekirei's Activation Threshold) for each case where the Ashikabi is presenting an upper case attribute and the Sekirei presents a lower case attribute. So in this example the Ashikabi would receive a bonus for D, K, N, V, and W attributes.

The Ashikabi receives a negative modifier for his effective Overall Metapsychic Power Rating (for purposes of reaching the Sekirei's Activation Threshold) for each case where he presents a lower case attribute and the Sekirei presents an upper case attribute. In this example, the Ashikabi would receive a negative for B, G, P, Q, R, T, and X.

All attributes which match cases - whether upper case or lower case - have no effect on the encounter.

Continuing with this example, our potential Ashikabi has five attributes that give him a bonus with this Sekirei and seven attributes that give him a negative. Thus, overall he would receive a penalty to his OMPR when determining if he can reach the Sekirei's Activation Threshold.

Note, just because in our example the Ashikabi ends up with an overall penalty to his efforts this does not mean he cannot get a reaction from the Sekirei. He might, for example, start with an Overall Metapsychic Power Rating that far exceeds the Sekirei's activation threshold. So even with the negative penalty from the Attribute Compatibility check he could still exceed the Sekirei's activation threshold. The two may never be aware of the fact that they are not particularly compatible.

Due to Attribute Compatibility and Circumstance Modifiers it is possible for an Ashikabi who does not normally have enough metapsychic power to cause a reaction in a Sekirei to reach that Sekirei's activation threshold. If they are particularly well matched (15 or better complimentary matches and no penalties) the reaction can even be very strong.

Even without a strong reaction it may still be possible for the example Ashikabi to establish a Wing Bond with the example Sekirei. It might require more effort on his part (i.e. it may require substantial circumstantial bonuses) to get him up to the Sekirei's Activation Threshold however.

Any Adept Farsensor can determine what the Attribute profile is for any Latent or Operant metapsychic as long as they know what to look for.

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v^v|NGFOM5.4|v^v

Started Dec 18, 2015  
First Draft Completed May 22, 2016  
Completed May 24, 2016  
Posted May 24, 2016


End file.
